Advent Calendar Part 2

So i'm a little behind, but i'm also a little ahead. If you're just catching up, this is what we're doing: HERE. Of course I should have read the directions better of what we're doing cause I didn't really follow along right. lol.

All ready to be sewed!

I cut out the tree, the backing, and embroidered my pockets and I found what I thought was this fabulous idea to go all blues and silvers for my pockets as I just love that Christmas combo. I found this really pretty silver embroidery floss at Joann's and set to work. I don't know if it's because I don't know how to do embroidery very well or what, but that silver floss sucks. BIG TIME. Now my numbers started off kind of terrible as well but I figured out my style was a little off and did fix that. I still couldn't get the silver to work though. The silver ones looked so bad even though the silver was still so pretty. I really wanted to love it... I ended up adding in two different colors of blues and thought if I just used the few silvers I had, it would be mixed in and still show the color... Well, they still just looked bad.  In case you're wondering, the silver kept fraying really easily. I had to use tape to keep it together to even thread it on the needle in the first place. And it just looked bad. I ended up redoing them with some white floss. I still have this blue and white thing going on but no silver :(

The silver embroidery

                     I also sewed my pockets together since I have two layers to them. I layed all of this out on my backing and I started sewing it on yesterday. I put it up on my sewing machine and realized, hey, I can't sew this. lol. For one, I lent out my walking foot to someone, and for two, I don't know how to use it anyways. I'm meeting up to get my walking foot back tonight as well as a quick tutorial on how to use it, but i'm still not for sure that I can figure it out... So I started hand stitching... OMG, this is taking forever! It looks nice, but FOREVER.

My tree

This is what I have done:
Backing cut
Pockets sewn together and numbers embroidered
Tree cut and started sewing onto backing.

Now based off the tutorial that we are following, HERE, this is what I need to accomplish this week:
Finish sewing all my tree and pockets to backing
Make 8 ornaments



If you're following along, the total of that is what we need to finish this week. I'm getting so excited for this by the way. I'm can't wait to see it done! Since we're starting ornaments, I thought i'd share a few sites where I found some really cute ones to attempt to recreate. Hopefully this will help you with some ideas at least.

How About Orange
Big K, Little G

P.S. Don't forget! Please post pics on my Facebook page if you're creating as well!

Tweet

Working on my tree

Here is the start of my tree. I'm trying to sketch it out first. My bottom right doesn't come down quite as far as it should though so I need to fix that but overall I think it works. Now let's see if I can actually transfer that to felt. lol. In case you missed it, this is what we're doing: Sew along advent calendar

Here is what i'm attempting to recreate courtesy of So Happy:









Have any of you started yet? I would love to see!

I still need to sew it together on my backing

EDIT - Here's the tree after I cut it out :)

Tweet

Advent Calendar

I'm sure most of you have heard about an advent calendar. We always had the little cardboard ones with chocolate behind the cut outs. I remember my brother used to sneak ahead and eat all the chocolate then close them back up. lol.

Photo from Stitch Craft Creations

Recently while looking around Pinterest I came across a felt advent calendar. I personally think they're gorgeous and I really want to make one. So after searching around online, I found a few bloggers who made some and got the general idea of how it goes. There's one blog in particular, Homemade by Jill, where she did a sew along and made an advent calendar with her readers. She did this 2 years ago but it started at the beginning of Nov and since it's now the beginning of Nov, i'm going to attempt to do this also! Now i'm going to warn you. I have very beginner sewing skills, and no embroidery knowledge (I think I used to embroider with my grandma when I was little?) but i'm going to try anyways. These are the sort of crafts that you can use every year and get passed down to your kids when they're adults.



So the question is, do you want to do this with me? I will post the link to her weekly challenge every week along with listing what i'm doing, and of course pictures!

So here's week 1!
Here is her assignment for the week:

• Cut your main backing piece (I am cutting mine to 20x30 inches)
• Cut your felt pockets and embroider them with numbers 1-24 (my pockets are cut 2 1/2 inches square).  She used a tight chain stitch to embroider her numbers.
• Sew the pockets to the backing piece (Great pocket tutorial from The Purl Bee)

Good luck! And please post if you're participating and picture if you have any :D

Tweet