Merry Christmas!

Hoping that you're enjoying your Christmas holidays!

As I promised here is a picture of the last few ornaments.

And as a special treat I recommend to you (as last year) to read the recent chapter of the Wormworldsaga.

 

A peaceful, relaxing, joyful Christmas to all of you and a happy 2012!

Making the season bright!

Isn't it incredible? Only two days until Christmas Eve! Do you have everything ready?
Unfortunately this year I didn't have the time to make any handmade presents. But since this Christmas is the first one as little family I tried to sew some decorations for our home.
The idea was to make a Christmas ornament each day in december and show it to you... but I realised that there would be many ornaments of the same kind and it would be too boring. And to be honest, I didn't manage to make one a day... how could I've ever expected that to happen? :-) But, well, I made enough of them to decorate the tree and with some bought stuff it'll look nice, I hope.

We will have a red-white tree this year and I have some more ornaments in the pipeline... perhaps I can share them with you tomorrow.

And here's a quick tablerunner and some napkins which I sewed this afternoon. Our table is superlong and yesterday on a little Christmasshopping I saw this perfect fabric for it.

And typically this post post would end here but I really really have to share something with you.
As I told you I went shopping yesterday... I was looking for some ornaments (just in case I woudn't finish mine ;-) ) I was strolling through our little city when suddenly I couldn't believe my eyes!
Look what I saw yesterday - 21st december by the way!

Yeah! Right! Easter Decoration! Easter won't be before April 2012!!! It's crazy.
Christmas sale starts on august and Easter sale on december!?! And the best was that there weren't any Christmas articles left. Nothing but some sad little bows... But never mind. Next year I'll hang some rabbits and eggs on the tree and leave it in the livingroom until Easter. Less work. :-)

Appliqué Skirt

It´s been a while now since the last post, but I needed some time to finish my new skirt. And tataaa! Here it is:

It's the pattern of my first skirt. (You can find it here.) It's the Burda pattern 7531. But this time I used a thick wool fabric. I liked the colour and it turns out that you can simply cut the seems without sewing. That's practical :-)

The skirt consists of four parts: Front, back, and two inner borders (also front and back). The zipper is on the left hand. After sewing the skirt I ironed the applications on to the wool fabric Therefore I used "Vliesofix". But I don't know if it's called the same in english. Afterwards I fixed it with a zig-zag stich. The appliqué fabric was a printed and knitted cotton fabric.  I just cut out the elements that I liked.

This is the front:





And this is the back:




After the sewing and application work came the part that took me really long: the embroidery. Most of it was done by hand but for some edges and the decorative stiching in between the applications I used the machine.

Although I would like to embroider some more ornaments I'm happy with the result already.
Here are some detail-pictures for you. (click to enlarge) As you can see it's a real mingle-mangle of stiches but I wanted it to look a bit messy... And I have to say it was great fun and a bit liberating to sew wild! This wasn't the last time for sure!