Personalized patchwork Christmas stockings

These personalised patchwork stockings were recently shipped off to a customer back home in Canada. Today I got a lovely email with the sweetest thank you from the buyer so I know they arrived safely and I'm in the clear to share these pics here on the ol' Milkybeer blog. I'm so incredibly pleased with how these turned out and so is the customer!

The design is based on the DIY tutorial I posted a few weeks ago [still plenty of time to whip up your own before the holidays!] but with a layer of batting added to the back and a cuff and cross-stitched names added to the top. The customer chose the fabrics from a wider selection of options I photographed for her to choose from. We decided early on to go for a monochromatic colour scheme on each one and I love, love, love how it turned out. Not a Christmas fabric in the bunch, but don't they look festive?!

I plan to add stockings to the shop for next Christmas season as custom order items. They will be available in a range of colours (at least these three) and could be personalised or left plain. If you're a super keener and know that you would like to order some for you family for next Christmas, drop me a line at heymilkybeer[at]gmail[dot]com. The cut-off for ordering will likely be early to mid-November 2014.

Also, may I just say how weird it is making stockings and getting ready for Christmas in the heat of summer? It just feels so bizarre. Guess I'd better get used to it though!

From our family to yours...

Dear Santa

Like so many other kids, Abner wrote a letter to Santa this year. This was the first letter she's written to the big guy in the red suit. I think we're going to have to work on her buttering up skills for next year though. She kind of dove straight into the wish list without the usual niceties of "How are you?", "How's Mrs. Claus?" and such.

Santa didn't seem bothered though since he took the time to write back. Abner was beyond thrilled to get a letter in the mail.

I wish I could personally thank the little elves that help Santa write back to all these little kids. It must be so much work, yet they miss out on the best part - seeing their eyes light up when they open that letter. Priceless.

One Word Wednesday: Trippy

Easiest Wreath Ev-ah!

Wanted a wreath for the door...didn't want to spend any money to make it happen.What's a crafty girl to do but dig into the craft stash and see what she could come up with.

This project required nothing more than cardboard and yarn. Lots and lots of yarn. How it's made should be pretty obvious, but I will point out a few details that might help in case you want to make one yourself:

• I used four different yarns (2 boucle and 2 chunky) which give an interesting texture
• I alternated between the yarns as I wrapped (i.e. 3 times around with blue boucle, then 3 times with blue chunky, 3 times with green boucle, 3 times with dark blue chunky and repeat...) I wanted the different colours and textures to blend together a bit

If I were going out and buying materials to make this again, I would probably go for more traditional Christmas colours. I think an assortment of reds, greens and creams would look lovely! But it sure was nice to use up yarn I'd had sitting around for nearly a decade!

As a bonus, it matches my couch perfectly.

Hey, Christmas tree, cute skirt!

I picked up a slew of Christmas fabrics after the holidays last year with good intentions to have a pretty new tree skirt made in time for the holidays this year. I even had the pattern designed sometime in January! To no one's great shock, I didn't even start cutting or sewing until just a few days ago. Thankfully it came together quickly.

I love aqua and red together. Don't you? To me it says Christmas without beating you over the head with holiday spirit.

And who doesn't love gingham? I used my bias tape maker to produce a few meters of straight strip (i.e. non-bias-cut) binding and attached it by machine. This goes against my usual preference to hand sew, but seeing as I was finishing the binding while The Dear Sweet Husband was out buying the tree, time was of the essence.

For the backing I used a piece of remnant fabric my aunt gave me some time ago. Lately, we had been using it as temporary curtains in our kitchen, so I guess I know what my next project is going to be.

My favourite part is the closure I came up with at the back. See how some of the squares are positioned to overlap with one another? When they're aligned properly, you almost can't see the two halves coming together behind the tree. If you're going to try this detail yourself, be sure to clip and notch your corners very carefully and press very well before top stitching.

Obviously I started this before we had our tree, or our tree stand for that matter, so I had to guess at the sizing. I suppose the skirt should probably come up to cover the stand a bit more, but I'm totally fine with this. TDSH picked out one good looking stand!

When I have more time, I will stitch some circles to properly quilt the layers (just like on my regular quilts), but this will do beautifully for this year.

DIY: Holiday gift bag

My love/hate relationship with gift wrap is quite well known so I won't go into it again here. Suffice it to say, I am all over the idea of wrapping gifts in something other than paper. Perhaps you are too?

If you'd like to learn how to make your own gift bags with encased seams, read on. As long as you can sew a straight-ish line, you're good to go. As an added bonus, you'll be able to brag to all your friends that you know how to make French seams. You'll sound so fancy!

Step 1: Select your fabric and cut it to size.
You can pretty much use any kind of fabric you want at any size - the process is the same for all. To start you need to cut your fabric into a rectangle. Figure out how tall you want your bag to be in the end and double this measurement and add on about 4 inches to get the long edge of your rectangle. The short edge will be the desired width of your bag plus an extra 2 inches or so.

Step 2: Sew up the sides.
Fold your fabric in half WRONG sides together using a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Trim the seam allowance down to 1/4 inch if you happen to get carried away in any spots.

Step 3: Turn your bag inside out and press the seams.
Your seams should look something like this now. You're now working from the WRONG side of the fabric.

Step 4: Attach the ties.
Cut a length of ribbon approximately twice the width of your bag and fold it in half. Use a pin to secure the folded edge of the ribbon to one of your seams from what is the inside of your bag at the moment.

Pin on the WRONG side of the fabric holds the ribbon in place inside the bag.

Looking into the bag with ribbon secured with a pin.

Of course, thinking back now, it would have been smarter just to pin and stitch the ribbon in during Step 2. D'oh! Why don't you go ahead and do it that way instead.

Step 5: Encase the seams.
With the bag still inside out, stitch up both sides - this time with a 1 cm seam allowance [yes, I did just switch to the metric system mid-pattern...I like to keep you all on your toes!] It's important to use a wider seam allowance on this step to ensure the raw edges of the seam will be completely encased.

Voila! You just made a French seam! Go ahead and remove that pin that was holding the ribbon in place. It should be nice and secure now.

Step 6: Hem the opening.
Turn down the top edge of the bag opening approximately 1 inch and press.

Turn down the top edge of the bag opening another inch and press before stitching the bottom edge of the hem in place. This would be a good spot to use a decorative stitch if you're so inclined.

And....you're done. Here's one of my finished bags. Pretty cute, non?

One Word Wednesday: Advent

Talk about the eleventh hour!

At about 9:00 pm last night, we had a knock our door. An odd time to be knocking, indeed. But understandable when you realize it was a sweet little grandma coming to pick up the advent calendars she'd ordered for her grandkids a few days earlier. I literally finished them just moments before she arrived [now you see where the title of this post comes in.]

So how did I come to be making advent calendars the night before advent starts?

This woman had gone looking for advent calendars at a few craft sales but hadn't managed to find just the right one yet. A vendor at one of the sales mentioned seeing advent somethingorothers at my booth at an earlier sale so she suggested she look me up. Which she did...finding her way to my Facebook page...where she read that my products are now carried at Groovy Mama...so, she called Groovy Mama to see if they had any of my advent bags...which they didn't...so back to the Facebook page she went and posted a comment asking I had any advent calendars...which led to a bit of electronic back and forth and an eventual meeting in a coffee shop in downtown Regina.

A few days later and several hours of sewing, these are what she picked up:

I used the same linen as my coasters and mug rugs and used some Christmas fabric I had kicking around for the binding.

After toying around with the idea of stitching on buttons in the shape of a tree as decoration, I opted to trim the calendars in red and green patchwork instead. Since these were going to university-aged grandkids, I didn't want to do something too cutesy. My take is that using non-holiday fabrics in very traditional Christmas colours will give it a classic look that will hold up for years to come.

Every single number was cut by hand from stiffened felt and machine stitched on. If anyone ever spots pre-cut stiffened felt numbers, please let me know. I don't know that I would do it by hand again...actually, it wasn't the cutting that was difficult, it was guiding my machine along those teeny little numbers [they're only about 1.25" tall.]

The pockets, loops and backing were done in red Old Navy twill.

In other advent-related news...

Thank you to everyone who has had taken the time to check out my advent activity cards printable. I never expected it to be this popular! I would love to see some of the activities that readers and their families get up to with the advent cards, so feel free to send in photos. Either put a link here in the comments, or email heymilkybeer [at] gmail [dot] com. Be sure to let me know if I can post your pics on the Facebook page!

Of course, we are getting our own advent activities going today. First up - "Make a Christmas card for someone you love."

The Christmas Book Basket

Whether you're ready for it or not, Christmas is less than a month away. That means it's okay for me to start writing posts about it, right?

The folks around Regina have been on a Christmas kick for weeks! We saw the first Christmas lights coming on ages ago. At first it seemed ridiculously early for such things until you realize the wisdom behind it: no one wants to be out hanging Christmas lights in the bitter cold so the smart ones get it done before the snow flies! Genius!

With all the lights around town and Christmas craft sales we've been going to lately, it's impossible not to get into the spirit of the season. The tree isn't up yet and there's still a moratorium on Christmas tunes (until December 1), but we have already dug out all our Christmas books and put together a Christmas book basket.

Abner is a big fan of books so it's no surprise that she's all over this basket idea. She loved digging through her bookcase looking for all the Christmas books she could find and shoving them in the basket. My mom has been giving her a new Christmas book each year since birth and we've gotten several others as gifts so we actually have quite a stash! [Note to self: get bigger basket for next year.]

We also hit up a local used book store the other day to add to our collection. I love the vintage look and feel of these new-to-us books.

The Christmas book basket is a new tradition for us, but one that I'm sure we'll bring back for many years to come. What are some of your favourite holiday traditions?

Free printable: Advent activity cards

You'll recall, last year I whipped up a last-minute advent calendar for Abner. She absolutely loved it and I've been looking forward to using it again this year!

With the start of advent just around the corner, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with ideas for activities to put in the bags this year. It seems to me that it would be nice to have a set of printed cards I could bring out year after year instead of brainstorming new ideas each year. [Does that make me sound lazy, or what?!]

To help my fellow last-minute mamas and papas out there, I've done up an advent activity printable that includes 30 activity cards and six blank cards.

Just print out the two-page PDF (be sure to print single-sided!) and cut out the 24 cards that work best for your family. I opted to print ours on a light-weight cardstock so that the cards will last for more than one season. You can use the blanks to write in your own special ideas too! I'll probably slip a few treats and stickers in with the activities too.

•  Print the advent activity cards

 Enjoy!

UPDATE: I've changed the hosting service for the PDF file to Google Docs. Sorry to anyone who was annoyed at having to sign up for that other service! I wouldn't have uploaded it there if I'd known about that.

Undercover piano bench

Since Abner was very small, one of her favourite things to do at Grandma and Grandpa's house is play the piano. All of the climbing up and down to get at those oh-so-fun-to-pound keys was sure taking a toll on the piano bench though. The corners were all chipped and other dents and scratches were starting to show up after almost every visit. So, when I drew my mom's name in our family's Christmas gift exchange, I was happy to have an opportunity to remedy the situation.

One stealthy measurement job by my brother and a quick trip to the fabric store and I had everything I needed to create this custom made piano bench cover.

I didn't have a pattern to follow so I just cut the fabric to the measurements my brother gave me (plus seam allowances), added a short skirt to create a tailored look and figured out a very simple way to affix the finished piece to the bench with elastics. I added a thin layer of leftover quilting batting to add a little cush for the tush.

Word from my mom is that the new cover is being put to good use and looks great in the living room...all that and not a dent or scratch in sight!

It's a Christmas picture post!

Christmas with a toddler is a magical time...like when we went to the mall first thing in the morning to see Santa, Abner kept repeating, "My Santa, my Santa, my Santa is coming! There's my Santa!" as she saw him walking down the hall to the photo set. Whenever she sees other Santas now, she informs us, "They're not my Santa."

Here is just a small selection of the slew of photos we've taken this Christmas...Happy holidays!

A carousel ride at Burnaby Heritage Village...this is going to be a tradition for sure!

Making a cornucopia to fill with treats and hang on the tree.

Visiting Father Christmas...but not wanting to get too close (wasn't her Santa, after all).

Petting the reindeer at the Burnaby Heritage Village. Love that place.

Abner made gingersnaps with TDSH and put them out with milk and carrots for Santa on Christmas Eve...Santa is one lucky guy...the extras I ate were fantastic!

Despite years to the contrary growing up, we are definitely a gifts before breakfast kind of family!

Calling Santa to thank him for the gifts. She decided to do that all on her own! How adorable is that?!?!?

And for mommy, a thread organizer, shears and a new bathroom reader (it's tradition, don't ask).

We also managed to get in a short walk on the dyke before dinner at my aunt's place.

The whole family came out to celebrate, play games and, more importantly, eat together.

My brother brought along a game he made recently that was a total blast.

The obligatory cousins-in-matching-pajamas shots.

And finally, the adorable cousins-in-matching-hats shot. Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!