Christmas Quilts

Today I'm going to show you some of my Mum's Christmas quilts. She took up quilting when she retired and spent much of her time making quilts; some were sold to raise money for charity and some were given away but we still have a huge pile of them. Most of the Christmas quilts are small ones, made to hang on the wall.

First of all, there's the big Christmas quilt that she made for us when we first moved into this house. The fireplace in the middle is the one in our kitchen.

Here's a close up of that central panel. The stove is still there but the blue kettle wore out years ago.

The centre is surrounded with applique blocks with a festive theme. There's another Father Christmas ...

... several different snowmen ...

... and, of course, lots of angels ...

Angels appear in a lot of Mum's quilts and they're nearly always of the homely variety, like this one with her cat angel or the flying angel, complete with basket.

The next border is made up of a combination of Christmas tree fabric and panels showing the Twelve Days of Christmas before the whole thing is surrounded with some holly fabric.

This quilt is on the coffee table in the front room this Christmas, much to the delight of the two cats. Linnet sits under the table and Tolly tries to get at her from outside until he catches his claw in the quilt and pulls it off the table - normally on top of Linnet. It's a game that neither of them has got tired of yet.

The next quilt features a Christmas tree appliqued on top of a pieced background.

In this picture you can see how some of the decorations are cut out of patterned fabric to make use of the images.

This little quilt is a Christmas Sampler made using foundation piecing. This involves machine stitching over a paper pattern which is later torn away. It's a good technique for getting very accurate shapes, even at a small scale like this.

These flying geese blocks are only about an inch across and would be very difficult to piece accurately without using a foundation.

I like the way she's used patterned fabric to supply the face for this Father Christmas ...

... and the spiral on this star shows that you don't just have to follow the pieced shapes when it comes to quilting ...

Each block is set against red and green frames and then the whole quilt has a wide border. I like the little pieced corners too.

The next quilt was always very popular with the children as it has lots of little pockets (the red squares) to hold chocolate.

Mum used to get chocolate Father Christmases to peep out of each pocket until they made them bigger. From then on, they had to go in the pockets head first! That border is the fabric she used for lots of her Father Christmas faces, including twice on this quilt.

Can you see the reindeer quilted behind the first one?

Another pre-printed panel of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' was used for this next quilt, with some of the words quilted in the middle.

The angels in this quilt are unusually traditional for Mum - no hair for a start. For that reason we've always called this quilt 'Chemo Angels'.

The following two quilts are stained glass in fabric form, first a Christmas robin ...

... and then a candle ...

This one was actually made for us and is hanging where I can see it as I write this.

Finally, I thought I'd show you two tiny Christmas quilts. The first one is about six inches square and is decorated with buttons and beads.

And then there's the quilted Christmas card ...

Mum made quite a few of these little fabric postcards, always featuring one of her trademark, deliberately bad poems. As you can see, this one has a knitting theme.

I've got more of these postcard quilts somewhere that I can show you another day. Mum also made me a new patchwork stocking every year ...

Christmas Wreath

Every year for the past ten years or so I've prepared a big Christmas series of patterns to be released during December. I started with my Advent Garland and, since then, there have been trees, a Gingerbread House and more than one Christmassy scene.

Not this year though. I normally start work on the big Christmas pattern in March and, having been ill since April, that obviously wasn't going to happen in 2020. Instead, members of my ravelry group have been sharing their progress on various Christmas projects, often ones which have been languishing unfinished for a while.

For a long time I've thought it would be nice to knit a more Christmassy version of my Woodland Wreath, which I originally intended to be a celebration of Autumn rather than Christmas.

I still like this wreath (it's hanging on my front door at the moment) but I hankered for something a bit more festive. So, I set out to knit a Christmas wreath, using some of my existing patterns.

To start with, it was straightforward. I covered the polystyrene wreath with knitting and added lots of layers of leaves. I didn't knit the oak leaves (too autumnal) and used plain green leaves with embroidered flowers to represent the Irish Ivy in my garden.

Then there were the holly leaves and the mistletoe, followed by fir cones and toadstools.

I was pleased with the toadstools; often I go back to old patterns and am disappointed but these have stood the test of time well, I think.

At this point, it started to get difficult. The next two sets of ornaments I added were Santas and snowmen, both of which proved too fiddly for my tired Covid brain. They each involved quite a few changes of colour plus beads which meant finding all the bits, putting them all together, tidying up afterwards ... too many things to think of at once. I nearly gave up at this point but I'm glad I didn't.

I think there should be another snowman but I just couldn't face making another one.

Once these were done, the end was in sight. The last two sets of ornaments were wrapped presents (just knitted squares) and little stars. I was so glad to get it finished. I would have done a happy dance after sewing the final star to the wreath but that would have just made me feel worse.

So, here it is - one Christmas wreath.

I had planned to add a string of lights to it once I'd finished the knitting but decided that the lights took away from the knitting too much. what do you think?

Anyway, I now have a festive wreath, as well as the original.

I don't think I've exhausted the potential for knitted wreaths yet. I've already designed a Springtime Wreath and one with a Seaside theme so that's the four seasons covered. Next, I think I'd like to work on one featuring festive food and drink; I envisage this one as a mini wreath, about half the size of the others.

In the meantime, I've been struggling with a crochet version of the little knitted mini stockings that I've been making for years. I thought this would be a quick design but it turns out that crocheting something foot shaped is harder than knitting - or maybe I'm just not very good at crochet. The hardest parts were the heel and the cuff. I think this one looks all right but I need to make some more to test a few details. I'm hoping that by next Christmas the pattern might be ready to publish.

Calendars from the Past

My last post about Advent Calendars got me remembering other advents when the children were small. So, with the help of my daughter (who has scans of all our old photos), I thought I'd show you a few of those memories.

To start with, here's Jack at a year old in 1988, studying his first picture advent calendar.

He looks like he's taking it very seriously, doesn't he? And blimey, how young I look there. Look at this one - obviously taken just after getting that pesky little door open.

By the next year, when he was two, I'd made him his own special calendar, thanks to a pattern in 'Prima' magazine (does anyone else have fond memories of the Prima patterns?)

Over thirty years later, we still hang this calendar up every year but it no longer has little parcels wrapped in gold paper in the pockets.

Then there was the gold coin calendar which both children remember very fondly. I got the idea from a Christmas craft book; here's Jack painting it when we made it the Christmas he was four.

It's basically a stick from the garden 'planted' in plaster of paris in a flower pot and then painted white and sprinkled with glitter. You hang numbered chocolate coins from the branches, one for each day in advent. Here's Jack with the tree in 1992.

Rose had been born earlier that year but was too young for chocolate coins but, don't worry, I soon had to start hanging two sets of coins from the branches. 

Rose's special advent calendar is a cross stitch one from a pattern by Jo Verso. Here she is, waiting for her little parcel in 1993.

I'm not sure a not quite two year old should have been standing on a chair.

There was a different cross stitched picture under each parcel. As you can see, the chocolate coin tree was still very much in use. I notice my collection of 'Creative Hands' magazines on the shelf too. I still have those craft magazines. 

It's nice to remember those times. Meanwhile ... my yarn advent calendar is coming along nicely. The mini skeins are obviously following a colour order as there's been an awful lot of pink. Today's colour is a blueish grey though so maybe blue will be next. The latest shade is called 'Good Fairy' and came complete with a fairy charm.

I'm crocheting five little two inch squares from each skein and then using up the rest to make a 'round thing'. This is particularly liberating as I'm just making it up as I go along. It's nice not to always be in 'designer mode'.

Advent

I love advent calendars. Home made ones, edible ones, craft ones ... there's always a risk that I will spend most of every day in December opening them. I hadn't got round to sorting one out this year, what with getting through each day being more than enough to think about. Luckily for me, other people came to my rescue.

First my daughter sent me this beautiful calendar.

It's a 3D Toy Shop, designed by Emily Sutton, one of my favourite artists. It's in pride of place on the bureau in my bedroom where I'm hoping the cats won't be able to get to it. I have a soft spot for picture advent calendars as that's what I had as a child. I remember sharing one with my brother. What I don't remember though is having trouble finding the numbers. Nowadays it takes me ages to find the number each day. Today's little door was on the back of the shop in the basket of a bicycle.

Rose and I compare notes on the pictures on our calendars each day which is nice too. Hers was a fox on skis today (of course it was).

The big excitement this advent though has been this intriguing parcel which arrived a few weeks ago.

As instructed, I opened it yesterday and look what I found ...

A very kind friend on ravelry has sent me a yarn advent calendar from Henny Penny Makes. Do you want to see inside?

24 little striped sweet shop bags, each with a skein of hand dyed 4 ply yarn. I hadn't heard of this dyer before so I'm very excited to discover her. Oh the excitement when I opened the first bag this morning ...

Each mini skein weights 10g and the colours are all inspired by pantomimes. This one - a lovely blend of silvery grey with a dusting of pink - is called 'Glass Slipper'. I think I might punch a hole in the little cards and thread a length of each colour through so that they will serve as a shade card.

Can  you see the little stitch marker at the bottom of the picture? That was a lovely surprise. I had two with the original parcel but wasn't expecting more. This one is a bauble with multi-coloured star confetti inside. Here it is with the other two.

I think these are too nice just to use as stitch markers so I shall probably turn them into jewellery. What do you think?

Of course, I couldn't resist playing with my new yarn as soon as I'd got it so I wound it into a ball and crocheted a little square.

I liked the idea of using each day's yarn but didn't want to commit myself to anything too time consuming. So, that little square is only 6 cm across - I can make more on days when I'm up to it and just one when I'm not. No idea what I shall turn the little squares into yet but I'm sure an idea will evolve as I go along.

As well as all this new advent treasure, I've also fished out my old Advent Stars to hang up each day. These are a really easy calendar as I just hook them over the rails above my scullery windows and they're done. Here's the first one in a truly dreadful photo.

Here are all the stars in a much better light.

This evening I shall light the first of my advent candles too. I used to buy those special marked candles where you burn so much each day but they proved too traumatic for me. I was always burning two days at once by mistake (or missing days). Now I just use tealights. One lasts just about the right amount of time and it doesn't matter if I miss a day.

I wonder if I should go and crochet another square ...