A fun little gift with a Christmasy touch

 

Recently our Nevada daughter and her family drove across country and spent ten days with us here in New Hampshire.  She brought me and her sister sweet little hostess gifts -- mug rugs she had purchased at the 2022 Ozarks Homesteading Expo, which their family had attended on their way East.  Mine has tufted titmice, as you see, and the one she brought for Carrie had chickadees.

I thought these mug mats were so cute!  And they look easy too.  The bird postcard motif looks as if it was stitched to the ticking stripe fabric by hand, using a buttonhole stitch and green floss.  

These could be made with any type of rectangular fabric motif.  I love mug rugs and am always wanting to make more for gifts.  Stay tuned ... I may actually make some similar ones at some point.

A Christmasy surprise in August!

How much fun is this?  A few days ago I picked up the mail and was intrigued to see a large manila envelope from my blog friend Arlene.  Arlene blogs at Nanaland.  Among other subjects, Arlene writes about cross stitching, decorating, books, grandchildren, and her little getaway place in Georgia.  She is one of those bloggers I hope to meet in real life one of these days.

What had Arlene sent me?  It was a project-filled magazine called Annie's Christmas, the 2015 edition.  It seems that Arlene had won this magazine at a cross stitchers' group she attends.  Kindly, she thought of me and my Christmas blog and decided to send it on to me.  She enclosed a note:

What a nice surprise!  This thick magazine contains many projects to knit, crochet, sew, cross stitch, quilt, or paper craft.  Although obviously I will not make every project, I do already see a few that I would like to try.  My eye is drawn especially to the sewing projects like the kitchen set pictured below.  It's a set of place mats and hot pads with a sweet vintage look.  I think that I would make the hot pads and use them as mug rugs.  This project would be perfect for using up narrow scraps of Christmas fabric.  I'm not much of a quilter at all, but I think I could manage this beginner-level project.

Thanks for your thoughtfulness, Arlene!  It was like Christmas in August!

Some more fun Christmas fabrics

This is just a scan I did of the fabric.  You can get a much better look at it by clicking the link below.

 A few years ago, a friend and I visited a local shop just before Christmas.  It was a rustic, seasonal spot that seemed to be part farm market, part antiques mall and part craft fair.  Local crafters each had their little section within the shop.  One area I was particularly drawn to held a number of simple sewed items like place mats and pot holders.  I found some simple square pot holders made from a vintage-look skiing print that I loved, and bought one for each of my daughters.

 Ever since then,  I have thought it would be fun to make up more pot holders in similar prints, either for gifts or for sale.  So while browsing Fabric.com to spend my gift certificate, I came upon this Dear Stella design called Ice Skating White, I just had to order it.  It isn't quite as nifty as the skiing print I liked so well, but it is very cute and I can see it being used for mug rugs as well as pot holders.  Then I came upon another, coordinating, Dear Stella design called Train With Presents White -- and, since I have a number of train-loving grandchildren, I thought I could find some uses for that one as well.

Also a scan.  Click the link above for a better look.  This reminds me of a child's drawing, especially the trees.

I've pinned both of these  fabrics to my Crafting for Christmas Pinterest board, rather than to my fabric board, so I will remember to use them in my Christmas crafting.  I hope I have time to do some of that this year, but my life has become very busy.  We will see!  I will wash the fabric and have it ready, at least.

December 10 ~ A small bit of Christmas crafting

 
Over the past little while I have accomplished a small bit of crafting.  Yesterday I wanted to try a pattern I had seen for snow globe coasters.  They are made of felt and adorable but instead, I went for something simpler.  In my Christmas fabric stash, I found some snow globe fabric.   I had used the individual snow globes once on a sweatshirt for one of my daughters.  So I first tried making one of these into a coaster.  It came out cute, as you see above, but a little on the small side.

So I went a different route and made mug mats.  I was quite pleased with how they came out.

Sorry it is askew here.  I scanned these rather than taking pictures.

This one stayed a little straighter in the scanner.

A week or two ago I made some banners using old Christmas cards, paper crafting supplies and ribbon.  I will show only one of these for now, as my time is limited today, but later on I will tell more about the project, including a link to the pattern, and showing more pictures.

The others are pretty similar, and I think this one may have come out the best.

That's all the crafting news for now!