Quick ornaments

Even though I'd given myself a year off from Christmas crafting I couldn't resist making a few little ornaments as presents. These little trees are one of the projects in "Fa la la felt" a simply gorgeous book containing 45 different Christmas decorations you can make with felt.

These trees looked to be the simplest in the book - just a simple shape with some freehand back stitching for decoration and after whip stitching both pieces together you're done. So very quick and satisfying, I would have made more but I ran out of felt!

Now I should really go and wrap some presents... happy Christmas crafting everyone!

Christmas cross stitching

Our little girl is now 2 months old and things are finally starting to get into more of a routine here at Tea Towers. For the past two months I have spent every evening trying to settle Emily by holding her in my arms which makes doing any craft particularly difficult. As we are starting to get better at settling her down in her basket I'm starting to have my hands free for half an hour every evening which has finally given me the time to finish off these pretty cross stitch decorations.

I tend not to do much cross stitch now I have kids as there is never enough time in the day to do long projects and if I tried to do a large piece it would take me years to complete. However, I was given a copy of a cross stitch magazine while in hospital before having Emily and it included a lovely kit to make these cute little Christmas houses. Surprisingly I found it didn't take me long at all to do the cross stitch element of these houses, what took the time was having to sew them all up, iron and stuff with fiberfill. I'm really pleased with how they came out though and will have to try and choose one to keep for us as the other two already have intended new homes.

A late blooming poinsettia

You don't normally get the best out of poinsettias in April - but not in my flat... nope, in Jess land time has stood still for a good 4 months.

As you can see I'm still doggedly working my way through a list of UFO's and this is one that I started way back in December but didn't have the heart to finish. Nothing to do with the pattern though (which is freely available on the PlanetJune blog), I made life much harder for myself by deciding that I wanted to make it up in crochet thread and have it as a tree decoration.

In the end I think it was well worth all the effort, I love the chunky 3D nature of this decoration and I can't wait till December to show it off to my friends and family. But for now this will be the last late Christmas decoration that I'll be making up, best move on to some of my other patiently waiting projects.