The Sewing Mom

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Last year I decided I wanted to utilize my sewing skills to create items I could use in decorating my home for the Christmas holiday. I had discovered an applique/quilt designer by the name of Nancy Halverson and I really enjoy the designs she creates and decided to give it a try.

I began by purchasing fabric and the pattern book, “The 12 Days of Christmas”.

From the numerous patterns in the book, I chose to make the “Countdown to Christmas”. These are individual quilt blocks created along with raw edge applique. I prefer the raw edge for decorative blocks, mainly because it is a faster applique technique (I don’t have to turn under the edges!). My sewing machine has a blanket stitch, so I am able to do most of the stitching by machine. I’ve added the loops to each block in order to hang them individually.

The completed project appears on the shelves in our family room, near our Christmas tree and I change the number panels each day as we “countdown to Christmas”!

For more ideas on decorating for the Holidays, please feel free to continue your blog hop by visiting: A Second Cup and don’t forget to visit the host of this blog hop, The Frugal Housewife

Over the last several weeks I’ve posted several Tackle It Tuesday projects and wanted to finally give some updates on how I’ve been progressing. To begin with, I have posted a couple of times about tackling this particular sewing project and, I finally finished my Countdown to Christmas project. There are a total of 13 individual blocks, each one with its own applique, each is also machine quilted. The Santa block also had some additional detail work including painting the blush on the cheeks, hand embroidering the eyes and sewing on all the decorative buttons. I am very proud of this project and am thrilled with how it turned out! It is now on display in my family room.

While this project did not take as much time, it still seemed like it would never end, the holiday decorating. The bins sat out for way longer than I would’ve liked, but finally, it’s done. My mantle needs some adjusting because I’ve moved things around, but it will be completed soon. Our stocking holders that we’ve always used on our mantel wouldn’t fit in this house because of the mantel design, so I had to find a different way to hang them. Thankfully I found this great little rack at Kirkland’s which looks so pretty when the fire is burning behind it.

Here are a few photos of my family room, including the tree. On the shelves you’ll see my Countdown to Christmas and the table show my holiday card holder and nativity set given to me by my sister many years ago.

It’s funny how being out of town for Thanksgiving can put me behind on my holiday decorating! I normally haul everything out the day after Thanksgiving, while everyone else is hitting the Black Friday sales, and have it all done by Sunday. This year though, because we weren’t home, I’m behind.

I rearranged the family room furniture on Sunday and my husband put up the tree Sunday afternoon. By Sunday evening, the lights were on the tree and I added the garland. That’s as far as it got. All of the boxes of decorations are still sitting here and the family room is a disaster. The dog’s bed is even sitting in the middle of the room because it just sort of landed there, she seems happy with it!  You can even see my daughter’s homework project in the middle of all the chaos, we were busy working on her collage instead of decorating.

So, my tackle is to get busy and get the room decorations up. I have to wait on decorating the tree for my daughter to be home after school. She would not be happy with me if I did the tree without her! By the way, I have a 2nd tree as well that I put up to hold all of my Barbie ornaments that I have collected over the years. That’s also on my to-do list and I still have to go purchase this year’s ornament from Hallmark.

How’s your decorating going?