Wednesday, December 26, 2007

the stockings were hung...

For Christmas, our fireplace would not be complete, if Peng, our exchange student from China, did not have a stocking to hang! She had never celebrated Christmas before so the customs of hanging stockings and decorating trees with ornaments were all new to her. I made her a Christmas stocking for Santa to fill for her and to take home as a momento of her first Christmas in America.


(clicking on photo will make it larger)

I started with a pattern in "Fast, Fun & Easy Christmas Stockings" by Susan S. Terry and modified it to work with some of the Christmas strips that I had received in a swap. Then I added buttons: a gold glittery star, Christmas lights on the tree, and presents in the snow. I also glued on some garland. Some buttons were added by her name also. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. Santa came and filled it with all sorts of goodies too!!

On Christmas day, I finally finished my happy blocks for the month of December. The theme was jewel tones. The centers were off-white and the outside borders were jewel tones. Here's what I came up with:


I decided I had better use my time wisely so I went right on ahead and completed my January blocks as well. The theme is winter blues. I found some fabric with dogs playing with snowmen in the snow—sledding, falling, building snowmen etc. I fussy cut the centers from this fabric so they are all different and then cut the borders from 3 different blue fabrics. Here's a shot of 3 of these:



Hope everyone had a grrreat holiday! And keep the spirit of Christmas and the memory of Christ's birth in your heart all the year through!
Wasie