This Year´s Advent Calendar

 

It wasn´t a plan, but over the years I found that I´m tempted to sew at least one advent calendar in a year.  I look subconsciously for Christmas fabrics with small motives (for small advent pockets or bags) or for interesting fabric panels which would be suitable as a central motive of a wallhanging.  There is a large selection of Christmas fabrics on the market but I´m picky and I like only a few of them. My eye falls almost always on Anni Downs and Cori Dantini fabrics.

 

This year´s advent calendar is a little bit special, because it is not a calendar for a child. This calendar was sewn for a dear friend of mine, who loves Advent and Christmas. Last year she complained that she prepares advent calendars for her daughters but – being an adult woman - she never gets one herself. I knew immediately who the next advent calendar would be for.   

The basic material is natural linen, the central motive is Cori Dantini´s panel from the Joy& Wonder collection. I write it again and again, but I just have to: Cori Dantini´s fabrics are absolutely amazing. They are not only beautiful in themselves but also very strongly inspiring. Working with them I cannot “only use” them. I´m tempted to develop them, add details, embellish, quilt… 

The central motif is fused appliqué on linen with an added layer of linen on the edges of the picture. The whole piece was laid on the cotton batting, stitched and quilted by machine, I added also a few hand stitches.

I sewed 24 small pockets and my husband added metal eyelets. 

The pockets were arranged and sewn around the central motive,the hemming was made and finally the pieces of string were added. 

 

The piece de resistance are the Tim Holtz number tokens and tokens with quotes. It took a long time before I could finally buy them, but it was worth it, I love them!

Happy Advent time, dear Denisa!

Happy sewing!

Michaela

Rust Dyeing II.

In my latest blog, I wrote about dyeing with fiber-reactive dyes. I dyed not only fabrics but also laces, ribbons, and threads. I was thrilled with the result and decided to try dyeing these materials also with rust. 

There were no old materials in my stash because everything was used with dyeing in August, so I had to buy some new materials. Only thread buttons were old - a gift from my dear friend Alena.

There is always enough old iron in our garden:

The materials were arranged in three plastic bags, made wet with water and vinegar, covered with iron pieces, and laid in the garden in the (autumn) sun.

The plan was to open the bags after two days or so. The fact is that I forgot it completely and didn´t open the bags until a week later. The color was great: a full dark red rust shade!

My new treasures are already washed, ironed, and neatly stored next to the ribbons, threads, and laces from the previous dyeing baths. 

After many weeks of my usual summer creative crisis, I look forward to new projects!

Happy stitching

Michaela