I Found the Perfect Christmas Tree Skirt!

"Holy Night" Appliqued Christmas Tree Skirt, available from Novica

I found the perfect Christmas tree skirt!  I know, I had planned to make one myself, but when I saw this "Holy Night" appliqued Christmas tree skirt on Novica's web site, it was exactly what I was looking for in so many ways.  Novica is fair trade organization with ties to National Geographic and Unicef that works to create opportunities for economically disadvantaged artisans around the world to sell their handmade goods for fair prices.  A Peruvian artisan named Balvina Huaytalla created this predominantly blue "Holy Night" tree skirt, which is perfect for tying in the blue star on my kitchen Christmas tree, and the folk art style of the dimensional stuffed applique complements the kiddo-themed ornaments on that tree as well (toys, sweets, and handmade ornaments going back to the boys' preschool years).  More importantly, I love that this tree skirt depicts the nativity, a reminder that the gift of our Redeemer's birth trumps any other gift we might find beneath the tree.  My parents used to set up a nativity scene beneath our Christmas tree, but when I tried that a couple years ago baby Jesus was abducted by our dog...  Since this holy family is stitched securely to the tree skirt, they should be safe from Lulu the Treacherous!

So, here's the Kitchen Christmas tree with the new tree skirt:

Kitchen Kiddo Tree with Nativity Tree Skirt

See how the blue at the bottom of the tree helps the blue star look less out of place?
Isn't it beautiful?

The Holy Family, Safe from Wicked Dogs

Could I have made my own version of this tree skirt instead?  Sure, but it would have taken a long time and I might not have finished it in time for Christmas this year.  Moreover, ripping off the artist's design instead of buying her tree skirt is really the OPPOSITE of fair trade, isn't it?

So, back to my pineapple log cabin quilt!  Happy Hannukah to all of my Jewish friends, and Happy Advent and Merry Christmas to my Christian friends and family.  May we all experience God's presence and peace this holiday season.

My Son Lars, Designer of Festive Holiday Decor

Remember how my 13-year-old son Lars took the Advanced Drawing EQ7 software class with Barb Vlack at Quilt Week over the summer?  Well, we need a new tree skirt for one of our Christmas trees, and I asked Lars to design one for me in EQ7.  This is what he came up with:


48" Diameter Christmas Tree Skirt, Designed by Lars

Hmmm...  Joy to the world, anyone????  I think it looks like that German Krampus devil that supposedly comes to punish all the bad kids who ended up on Santa's Naughty List:

See the resemblance?  Anyway, back to the drawing board, because that creepy dude is NOT going under my Christmas tree!

This is more of what I had in mind:

48" Diameter Tree Skirt, Designed by Mom

The fabrics are not to scale and the color is a little off since they are snapshots taken with my phone rather than scanned images, but you get the general idea.  I wonder if this is too ambitious to try to make before Christmas?  It's for the Christmas tree in my kitchen, which is decorated with ornaments that look like candy, gingerbread men, toys, and brightly colored balls.  It has a blue star on top.  I have novelty print fabrics with Christmas cookies, peppermint candies, hot chocolate, and some pretty blue fabrics with snowflakes, as well as a red, green and pink stripe fabric that reminds me of peppermint sticks that I'm planning for the binding. 

Now that I drew this lovely tree skirt on the computer, I wonder if I can figure out how to actually MAKE it?

I'm going to link up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and with Anything Goes Monday at Stitch By Stitch.

Jingle BOM Quilt Pieced Block No. 1 and School Musical Wrap-Up

"Jingle" BOM Quilt Pieced Block #1 Completed!

I managed to finish my Jingle BOM Pieced Block No. 1 today after the kids' play wrapped up.  Since I'm catching up on this BOM (Block of the Month), I'm doing the blocks out of order and have already completed Pieced Block No. 2.  After this, I have the first two appliqued blocks to do and a big, scary, appliqued center medallion for the quilt, and then I'll be caught up.  The pattern was designed by Erin Russek of One Piece at a Time, and you can visit her blog here to catch up if you'd like to join in.

I've never done one of these BOM things before, but I'm finding that there are some advantages to working this way.  For instance, usually when I start a quilt, I pick out all of my fabrics and cut out every single piece before I start sewing anything together.  This way, doing only one block at a time, I find that I'm not rushing as much because I don't have an intimidating stack of little squares and triangles waiting to be pieced together.  I am doing a lot more frog stitching (Rip it!  Rip it!), taking seams out and redoing them until they are perfect before moving on to the next unit.  I can't stand when my crisp little triangle points get eaten in the seam, and I want those seam intersections to match up perfectly. 

Well, this year's school musical officially wrapped up after the final matinee performance this afternoon.  Dads disassembled the sets while moms sorted out costumes, and now the Willy Wonka Jr. production is just a memory.  I thought I would be relieved, since the late night rehearsals (and even later nights fighting with small actors who think theatre should exempt them from other schoolwork) have been running me pretty ragged.  Naturally I'm glad the let's-make-lederhosen experience is behind me (what was I thinking?!).  I volunteered as a "child-wrangler" for two of the four performances, which entailed patrolling backstage and shushing actors who were not currently on stage.  It turns out that I am a terrible child-wrangler -- since the kids were all quiet, I sat down in the hallway where I could intimidate them with my presence (hopefully) and control them with an occasional scowl or shush.  I took out my iPad and stylus, opened the Paper by 53 drawing app, and started practicing quilting designs:
 

Before long, I had a flock of kids huddled around watching me draw, which I thought was great, because they were quiet, right?  Except that some of them were so interested in my doodles that they missed their cues and did not appear on stage when they were supposed to.  Oops.  Don't tell the director -- I don't want to be the first parent volunteer ever to be fired!

I don't think the kids were as interested in my drawings as they were in the app I was using to draw them. 

In any case, the show is done, the lederhosen is done, and the two pieced blocks for the Jingle quilt are behind me now.  That makes next week a fresh page, perfect for starting something new -- like needle-turn applique!  I may sneak in a little free-motion quilting on Monday, now, too.  After all of that doodling, I feel like quilting some feathers!

Enjoy what's left of your weekend!

As Ye Sew, So Shall Ye RIP! Jingle Quilt BOM, Pieced Block No. 2

Jingle BOM Pieced Block #2, Finally!

Sometimes, I think I'm really good at something, and then I discover that I'm really NOT.  Does this ever happen to you?  Well, it happened to me this weekend.  Erin Russek of One Piece At A Time is doing a Christmas themed Block of the Month (BOM) quilt this year called Jingle, and I'm determined to make this quilt.  Erin designs and sews the most beautiful appliqued quilt patterns, and her extensive needle-turn applique instructions on her blog tutorial have encouraged me to let 2013 be the year I finally learn to do hand applique.  I've admired others' applique work forever, but it's kind of scary to think about going Old School without my fancy schmancy Bernina technology to make me look better than I am. 

Erin Russek's Jingle Quilt BOM, patterns and instructions available here

Erin's pattern for the central poinsettia applique medallion for this quilt is available for $10.00 here.  The remaining blocks, 8 applique and 8 pieced, will be posted one at a time as free downloads on Erin's blog, One Piece At A Time, between now and November, and so far she has posted two applique blocks and two pieced blocks.  I'm a little behind already, but if I focus on just one block at a time, I should have a beautiful new quilt just in time for holiday decorating.  It's kind of fun not knowing what the whole quilt will look like until the end, too.  I love flowers, birds, Christmas, and red and green color schemes, so I know I'll really enjoy this project.

So far I have purchased the center medallion pattern and downloaded the four block patterns that have been released so far, and I finally picked out all of my fabrics and collected all of the supplies I'll need for the applique work, so it's time for me to catch up!  Naturally I am too chicken to start out with the huge 27" square center medallion for my first-ever applique, and even the smaller cardinal and floral applique blocks look kind of intimidating.  But the pieced blocks?  I've done plenty of pieced blocks before.  I'm good at pieced blocks.  Piece of cake, right?  WRONG!

Pieced Block #2

I chose Pieced Block #2 to start with, because the 3" center square is perfect for fussy-cutting my red poinsettia print fabric.  After auditioning scraps of fabric for about an hour (seriously!) I finally settled on the ones I wanted to use for this block, carefully cut out my squares, half square triangles, and quarter square triangles, and started piecing this block together on my Bernina 750 QE sewing machine with my #37D Dual Feed Quarter Inch Patchwork foot, dual feed engaged.  I started from the center square, first adding the gold triangles and then the green print triangles after that.  It was a disaster -- since the long side of the triangles (hypotenuse) was longer than the side of the square piece they were sewn to, I had trouble lining the pieces up correctly and the sides of the resulting square did not match up accurately -- easy to tell, because the sides of the square did not meet up at all.  So I ripped those stitches out and sewed the seams again, and the second time, my yellow square with a red square inside was actually a square.  So I sewed the green triangles on next, had more jagged sides, and had to rip those seams out and redo them.  I was so careful to get perfect little points on each and every triangle and I was delighted with how my block was coming along...  Until I MEASURED it. 

First Try, After Ripping and Restitching Twice, Still a Failure!

This block is supposed to finish at 9" square.  That means that the portion of the block that I'd sewn so far should measure exactly 6 1/2" square (6" plus a 1/4" seam allowance on all four sides).  As you can see in this photo, a combination of factors had combined to cause my block to finish too small and not even square.  And that's when I realized that I have never attempted to piece a block with this many pieces before.  I've done a strip-pieced Roman Square quilt, a double 9-patch quilt (also using the strip technique for the 9-patch units), a maple leaf pieced quilt with squares and HST (half square triangle) units, and the Drunkard's Path quilt that I finished most recently introduced the challenge of a curved seam but there were still only two pieces to each block.  The more pieces in a quilt block, the more seams, and the more seams, the more imperative it is that each and every one of those seams is EXACTLY 1/4" or else the pieces won't fit together properly and the blocks won't end up the correct size.  So all this time I thought I had mastered that perfect 1/4" seam, and apparently I just couldn't tell I was off because the blocks I was piecing were so easy that I was "close enough."

Well, when I get stumped, I go to my books to find solutions from people who actually DO know what they are doing.  This time, the expert advice I turned to came from Sally Collins' book, The Art of Machine Piecing, available from Amazon here.  Collins specializes in piecing on a very small scale, reducing traditional quilt blocks down to just 3" blocks, which requires fanatically accurate piecing skills.

The biggest light bulb for me was Collins' recommendation that you determine the grid for each block and from there, calculate the size of each and every unit of that block including the seam allowance.  Collins measures her block units after sewing every single seam, so that if something is off she discovers the problem immediately and knows that it had to be the last seam she stitched.  Why didn't I think of that?  The block I was attempting was a 3x3 grid, and my pieces were all supposed to finish 3", 6", or 1 1/2" (plus 1/2" seam allowances). 



Chalk Lines for Positioning Triangles

So the next day, I cut all new pieces of fabric, this time using my Kaye England Cut for the Cure specialty rulers so that I could cut everything from 2" strips instead of doing the traditional but convoluted "add 7/8" and cut the square diagonally" method of cutting that I'd done the first go-'round.  I was REALLY careful to cut my pieces to exactly the right size -- after all, if each piece was too small by even a 32nd of an inch, by the time you multiply that by all 41 pieces in this block it would add up to a significant error no matter how perfect my quarter inch seam was.  Then, for the triangles that needed to be sewn to the straight sides of the red square, I decided to mark the center with a chalk X to help me position the triangle points more precisely.  That made a HUGE difference!



Perfect this time!  No "Squaring Up" Trimming!

I was REALLY careful with the seam allowances today, too, watching the right side of the presser foot to make sure the fabric edge was aligned exactly with the edge of the foot, without even a thread of fabric sticking out to the right. 



Measuring Each Unit As It's Sewn: A Perfect 1 1/2" HST Unit

I know a lot of quilters say you shouldn't press during block construction or that you shouldn't press with steam because of the potential for distortion, but I suspected that I might be losing some of my block by not pressing my seams flat enough before sewing the next piece on top of them, so I pressed my little units as flat as little pancakes.  I found a Husqvarna Viking padded ironing surface with a 1/2" grid in my sewing room that I've had forever and never used (it came in some kind of Quilting or Home Dec kit, I think).  This made it really easy to check my units for size and squareness at the same time, and allowed me to use some steam with my iron without worry of distortion.  Why did I never use this before?  It's fabulous!

#57 Quarter Inch Patchwork Foot with Guide

I experimented with different presser feet today, too.  I decided that the #37 D Dual Feed Patchwork Foot might be nice for piecing long strips together without shifting or bowing, but that I wanted more support for my fabric at the back of the presser foot because some of my tiny triangles were getting "eaten" and pulled down into the stitch plate when I was using the dual feed.  I switched to my #57 Quarter Inch Patchwork Foot with Seam Guide, which was nice because it has a barrier at the right side of the foot that prevents you from sewing your seam allowance too wide.  However, once I was sewing different pieced units together, I discovered that you can't sew over pins with the #57 foot because the pins cannot pass under that guide plate, and I NEED to pin whenever seams need to meet up precisely.  At that point I switched to my #37 Quarter Inch Patchwork Foot, the plain one without dual feed or a seam guide, and that worked best for me for assembling the block units.  I always use a straight stitch plate on my 9 mm machine when I'm piecing, and for this block I followed Collins' recommendation to piece with a Schmetz 70/11 Microtex needle.  I used Aurifil Mako 50 weight 2-ply cotton thread. 

And finally, after three days, I have finished the block AND it measures 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" just as it should.  Yay!

Finished!  Perfect Triangle Points!  Perfectly Square, AND 9 1/2" x 9 1/2"!

Hopefully the next blocks will go together easier, now that I've worked out my kinks.  There are so many different methods for cutting and piecing these units; if one method doesn't work for you, just try another one.

Before I can move on to the next block of my Jingle quilt, I'm going to have to get back to that lederhosen costume I promised to make for the school play.  In fact, I need to head to school right now to pick up my kids from rehearsal and hopefully get Augustus Gloop to try on the muslin shorts I whipped up over the weekend.  They are enormous, but the plan is to have him try them on inside out, pin the side seams and mark the muslin, and then use that for my pattern when I cut into the microsuede.  I'm reconsidering the embroidery, though -- this is a costume that will be worn for 3 performances, so it doesn't make sense to slave over them and make myself crazier than I already am!

It's Christmas Eve!

Some Snowy Church in New Hampshire

Okay, so we're not having a white Christmas here in Charlotte, North Carolina, but a girl can dream, can't I?  ;-)  I just wanted to take a quick moment to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, especially since I didn't mail cards out this year. 

My parents will be here soon for Christmas Eve dinner, featuring my husband's rouladen and a Pumpkin Gingerbread birthday cake that Anders baked for my dad (with some help and supervision from Bernie).  After dinner, we're headed to the 11 PM Christmas Eve service at church, and looking forward to the service wrapping up the same way it does every year, singing the last verse of Silent Night a capella in candlelight.  We'll make our way home after midnight, and the boys will probably fall asleep in the car -- which is why we packed a bag with their pajamas so they can change out of their church clothes as soon as they get into the car. 

Tomorrow morning, around 3 AM if I'm lucky and even earlier if I'm not, the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies who claim to be my sons will spring out of their beds with an explosion of noisy energy, zoom through the house like Tasmanian devils until everyone is awake, and then whirl down the stairs to see what Santa has brought them.  Tomorrow will be barely-controlled chaos, but tonight -- Christmas Eve -- is all about peace, tranquility, and the only Christmas gift that any of us needs:

Nativity stained glass window, St. Mary's Catholic Church, Dubuque, Iowa

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (NKJV)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Of Christmas Trees, Candles, and Electric Lights

Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds in Holiday Inn, 1942

Lars and Anders were watching Holiday Inn for the first time this morning, enjoying the silver screen shenanigans of Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  Anders, my snappy dresser, especially enjoyed Fred Astaire -- dancing in TUXEDOS?!  What's not to love? 

I was startled when I noticed that the Christmas tree in this scene was lit by actual CANDLES.  In 1942?  Didn't they have electric Christmas tree lights by then?


First Electrified Christmas Tree, 1882

Well, my curiosity was piqued, so I did a little online research and found that, although Edward Johnson, Vice President of Edison Electric Company, first wired up electric lights on a Christmas tree in his home in 1882 as a publicity stunt, the majority of American Christmas trees continued to be lit by candles for another half century.  Wealthy people began electrifying Christmas trees for their parties around the turn of the century, but not only did this require hiring electricians to individually string and wire bulbs together, but they also needed to be hooked up to generators.  The first pre-strung lights weren't introduced for sale until after 1917, but even then they were so expensive that some department stores rented them rather than selling them outright. 

Still, Holiday Inn was made in 1942, and it was a big Hollywood studio production -- surely they could afford electric lights for their sets, right?  So here's the really interesting part, the part I knew but had forgotten: The introduction of electricity was confined to urban areas for decades, creating huge disparity between the lifestyles of city dwellers versus the millions of Americans who lived in rural areas.  This was because the power companies paid to create the infrastructure necessary for providing electricity, and it just didn't make good business sense to spend a lot of money running wiring to rural areas that were sparsely populated, with so many fewer potential customers.  It wasn't until after World War II that the majority of Americans had electrical power in their homes -- so, in 1942, the Christmas Trees in "rural Connecticut" absolutely would have been lit by candles, because the farm-turned-inn and the entire town of Midville, Connecticut would have still been without electricity at that time. 

If you're interested in reading more about the history of electric Christmas lights, I found the most complete history here from the NECA National Electrical Contractors Association.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

5 Days 'Til Christmas: Advent Eye Candy from the Art World to Set the Mood

"Saint Joseph Seeks Lodging in Bethlehem," by James Tissot, 1886-1894

Notice that I did not say "five SHOPPING days" until Christmas.  The shopping is finished, the homework and projects and tests and classroom parties are finished.  The decorating is finished, and the cookies have been baked.  Now all that's left to do is "watch and wait, which is what Advent is really all about.

So, I thought I'd take a moment to share some of my favorite depictions of the Christmas story in religious art.  It's interesting to me how differently artists imagine and interpret the Bible narrative, filling in the blanks and injecting much of their own culture and perspective into their portrayals.  My favorite is "Saint Joseph Seeks Lodging in Bethlehem" by French artist James Tissot.  I can almost hear the innkeeper calling down the stairs, "There's no room in the inn!"  Joseph seems frantic, Mary looks nervous, and Tissot achieves a fairly realistic background of what Bethlehem might actually have looked like two thousand years ago.  The depth and perspective in this painting really draws me into the scene and into the story.

"Adoration of the Shepherds," by Angelo Bronzino, c. 1540

Next, we have the "Adoration of the Shepherds" by Angelo Bronzino, a 16th century artist from Florence.  I really love the idyllic, pastoral landscape in the background of this painting and the rich jewel tones of the garments -- even though I know it's preposterous.  Prior to the invention of synthetic fabric dyes in the 19th century, vivid colored textiles could only be achieved through laborious processes requiring thousands of tiny bugs, mollusks, or plant materials, and vibrant fabrics like these would have only been available to the wealthy and powerful.  Actually, the artist probably chose these colors for symbolic reasons rather than attempting to imagine what the holy family was actually wearing when Christ was born.

Which brings me to the last painting I'll share tonight (this morning?  How did it get so late?!):


"The Star of Bethlehem," by Edward Burne-Jones, Watercolor, 1890

Burne-Jones, a Pre-Rafaelite Aesthetic artist, has reinvisioned the nativity in an idealized medieval European forest.  The magi who have come to pay their respects to the Christ child are bizarrely dressed in what appears to be irridescent silk dupioni and an exquisite jacquard tablecloth -- I know this is ridiculous, but I love how this artist depicted these unlikely fabrics so skillfully, with such a high level of detail and realism.   They called it the "Aesthetic Movement" for a reason -- this is absolutely gorgeous.  Can you believe this was done in watercolor? 

Well, I set out to write a nice post about Advent and focusing on the "reason for the season," but (typically) I ended up right back where I always do, obsessing about FABRIC!  Ugh! 

Ta Da! Paper-Pieced Star for my Advent Table Runner

I finished my 12" paper-pieced star block for my Advent table runner!  Isn't it pretty?  I doubt I'll have any more time to work on this between now and Christmas, but at least it's started.  I played around with fabric choices for a LONG time before I started this block, and I think I achieved exactly the effect I was hoping for.  Hooray!

And now I'm off to bed.  At 1:45 AM, on a SCHOOL DAY.  Morning will be painful, but that is why God in His infinite wisdom has blessed me with espresso beverages, n'est-ce pas? 

Sneaky-Peeky: A Paper-Pieced Star for My Nativity Table Runner

First Quadrant of my First Ever Paper-Pieced Block!

I have to leave for church in 10 minutes, but I'm so excited about the project I started last night that I had to post a quick preview.  I have a narrow console table behind the sofa in my kitchen/family room area where I display my nativity figures, and I'm currently using a store-bought quilted runner beneath them in reds and greens, but that table runner doesn't do anything for the muted colors of my nativity figurines.

Auditioning Fabrics with my Nativity Figures

I got an idea that I should make another runner in deep blue for Advent, with a gold star right in the center where the baby Jesus in the manger goes.  I've had Carol Doak's book 40 Bright and Bold Paper-Pieced Blocks (available from Amazon here) for several years, but had never gotten around to attempting paper piecing until now.  I spent several days reading and re-reading Carol's instructions, trying out different fabric combinations with my nativity figurines, and going back and forth between the different star blocks in the book before I finally settled on "Chris's Block."

I made four copies of the 1/4 unit that makes up the block, using special paper for foundation piecing (also already in my stash) that is supposed to be thin, strong, and resist transferring printer ink onto my ironing board.  I planned out my fabric placement with my sons' colored pencils, selecting colors as close as possible to my fabrics to get an accurate sense of how the finished block would turn out.  I wrote the color names of each fabric on the corresponding section of the paper foundations, lined up my pre-cut rectangles in numerical order, and sat down at my machine for some very weird upside-down sewing with my fabrics completely hidden by a piece of PAPER that I was sewing through.  This gave me ANXIETY, and I probably held my breath while I was sewing each seam.  However, I followed the instructions, kept the faith, and when I was finished I ended up with what appears to be a correctly sewn quarter of my star block.  (Note: my camera was crooked; the block is actually perfectly square).  Yippee!

I've got some gifts to wrap up for shipping and homework to supervise this afternoon, and my boys are singing in our church's Christmas concert this evening -- Lars even has a solo -- so I'm not sure whether I'll have a chance to work on the remaining three quadrants of my star today.  I only have a vague idea of what the rest of the table runner will look like, but at least I've made a start.

Happy Second Sunday of Advent to all of my Christian friends and family, and Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish friends!

By the way, I'm linking up to SewCalGal's Quilter's Christmas Party today.  If you have a moment, please pop over to join the fun, see what holiday projects other quilters have been working on, and learn how you can help make a difference by supporting Operation Homefront.

Santa Baby: Slip a Bernina 750 QE Under the Tree...

Dear Santa Baby,

You can skip the yacht, the sable coat, the Tiffany tree ornaments, the duplex AND the checks this year.  I'll pass on the deed to that platinum mine, too -- let someone else deal with the labor strikes in South Africa this year.  I'd trade them all away for the new 750QE sewing and embroidery machine from Bernina.

Bernina 750QE Sewing Machine

Yes, I flirted briefly with Bernina's top-of-the-line machine over the summer, the 830E or the 830LE (the Limited Edition version of this machine even had pretty swirling red graphics on the outside of the case -- pretty, but probably ultimately very distracting).  The 8 Series was released about 4 years ago, and my Bernina dealer made several valiant attempts to sell me on this machine.  However, the staggering $12,999 MSRP on the 830 machine is WAY out of my comfort zone.  Moreover, it's really not the perfect machine for me.  Why not?  

I'm Sew Inspired to Knock Off Mackenzie-Childs Jester Stockings and Christmas Tree Skirt!

Jester and Festoon Stockings, $240 EACH

Aren't these Jester and Festoon stockings from the Mackenzie-Childs catalog adorable?  They would look darling on the kitchen fireplace mantle, next to the kiddos' tree (the one decorated with miniature toys, candies, and all those handmade preschool ornaments that can never be thrown away). 

 

Unfortunately, the folks at Mackenzie-Childs must have gone stark, raving mad, because they want $240 EACH for these stockings, made of silk and polyester satin fabrics and rayon trims.  There are four of us, so we'd be kissing a THOUSAND DOLLARS goodbye for new Christmas stockings if I was going to order these (which I have NO intention of doing, Bernie, so please stop hyperventilating.  You're freaking out the dogs).

 

Court Jester Tree Skirt, $740

Anyway, you can't stop with the stockings, can you?  I mean, with these wild and whimsical stockings hung by the mantle with care, you'd need to get the matching tree skirt or no one would notice you had a tree at all.  Since the Mackenzie-Childs Court Jester Tree Skirt is $740, you're looking at close to two thousand dollars just for a tree skirt and stockings.  You could buy a sewing machine for that kind of money.  Not a sewing machine as nice as mine, mind you, but a very good sewing machine...

 

Which brings me to the point of this post.  For past generations, home sewing represented thrift because readymade "store-bought" clothing and soft furnishings were so much more expensive than the cost of the fabrics required for making them.  Now that so much of what we buy and wear is cheaply made overseas, home sewers can expect to spend MORE to make a garment themselves than they would pay for a similar readymade garment, unless you're talking about super high-end couture.  If someone has the skills to successfully knock off couture garments from Chanel, Dior, etc., they can find fabrics from those fashion houses at Gorgeous Fabrics and Emma One Sock and save thousands of dollars while looking like a million swanky bucks.  Unfortunately, I do not have couture garment sewing skills.

 

Court Jester Tree Skirt, for Crazy People with Money to Burn

But this Christmas tree skirt and stockings?  The sewing is not difficult, and the fabrics and trims are not expensive, either.  I could definitely make something like this, and have a blast doing it, too.  I probably have a few fabric odds and ends already stashed away in my sewing room that would work for this, I definitely have leftover fringes and cording trims, and I could pick up similar fabrics to the ones used here at Fabric.com or Mary Jo's Cloth Store in Gastonia and probably spend less than $50 for the tree skirt AND four stockings!

 

By my calculations, if I can make this tree skirt and stockings for $50, I will have SAVED close to $1700.  Stay tuned... 

Onslaught of the Christmas Cookies, 2011: Attack of the Ninjabread Men

Christmas Cookies 2011

The baking frenzy began innocently enough, with a batch of our family's favorite Crackled Molasses Sugar Cookies.  Those cookies vaporized within a day or two, and then we had to bake more crackled molasses along with a batch of Norwegian krumkake for the boys' internationally-themed classroom holiday parties. 

Krumkake filled with Strawberry Ice Cream

For those of you who do not have Norwegian heritage, krumkake are thin, crispy cookies that are made one at a time with a special iron that imprints a lacy design on each cookie.  After baking the cookie for about 20 seconds, you peel the piping hot cookie off the krumkake iron and wrap it immediately around a little wooden cone to shape the cookie.  Thanks to the krumkake baking session, I no longer have fingerprints, so it's a good thing they taste good! 

My mom never filled our krumkake with anything that I can remember, but all of the recipes suggest filling with whipped cream, fresh berries, or ice cream.  We discovered that krumkake make the best tiny ice cream cones, filled with strawberry Breyer's ice cream.  Yummy!

Lars Sucking Ice Cream out of his Krumkake

My krumkake were not as crispy as I would have liked, but my internet research suggests that the mild North Carolina weather was to blame.  I found an ex-Minnesotan/Norwegian baker in Texas online who claims that crispy krumkake perfection requires baking on a cold, dry day (and when they talk about a cold winter day in Minnesota, they mean zero temperatures or below) yet it was a balmy 68 degrees in Charlotte the day I was baking mine.  My cookies came out somewhere in between crisp and al dente, like pasta that isn't quite done yet, but doesn't break your teeth.  Not terrible, but not sublime either.  I'll have to try another batch of krumkake in January or February, when we get a cold snap.  Although I've always thought of krumkake as a Christmas and New Year's cookie, it would be perfect for Valentine's Day with the strawberry ice cream.  Also, nothing says I Love You like burning off your fingerprints on blistering-hot cookies, don't you think?

Christmas Cookie Decorating, Wayzata, MN, 1981

Now, to understand the craziness that followed, you need to understand that my mom made double or even triple batches of rolled sugar cookies for us to decorate every year for Christmas, going back as far as I can remember.  See evidence above.  I'm the one in the red dress whose hair is hanging into the frosting.  Susan always made the most beautiful cookies (she's the one in the foreground at left) and the younger ones, Janice and Donnie, would dump a quantity of frosting and red hots on their cookies in inverse proportion to their ages.  (In fairness, I must say that Janice the Manice's cookie decorating prowess improved with age, but she's 5 in this picture and I am pretty sure she was still a frosting dumper at that time).

When I have attempted to perpetuate this family tradition with my sons in prior years, we've been frustrated by the difficulty of squeezing the thick tubes of frosting from the grocery store.  Looking at the old picture, I see that the store-bought frosting used to come in a different container that was probably easier for little hands to use.  I also have a terrible time whenever I attempt to roll out any kind of dough, whether it's for pie crust or cookies.  The rolling pins and I are not the best of friends.  Finally, after so much effort is put into these shaped and decorated cookies, most of them are pretty ugly and I never really liked the taste.  Not making any cookies to decorate would be sacrilege, because it's a Family Christmas Tradition and I can't have my children growing up frosting deprived!

The Package from King Arthur Flour has Arrived

I was determined to improve the Cookie Decorating Experience this year, so I ordered LOTS of decorating goodies from King Arthur Flour a couple of weeks ago.  I got every color of sprinkling sugar you could imagine, edible glitter stars, chocolate jimmies, Fiori di Sicilia to flavor the cookies instead of the Almond Extract we'd used in the past.  I planned to try my hand at Royal Icing for the first time, because I'd be able to control the consistency and I hoped it would taste better than the stuff from the grocery store since homemade icing wouldn't have the chemical preservatives.  So I bought meringue powder to make the icing (instead of raw egg whites) and a variety of contraptions for piping the frosting onto the cookies, certain that at least ONE of them would be easy enough for the kids to use.  As a last resort, I even got some edible foodcoloring markers for drawing directly on the cookies or on hardened icing (Anders really loved these).

Anders drew a tuxedo on a gingerbread man with FooDoodler markers

Then I spent a bit too much time trolling the internet for decorating inspiration -- you can see my favorite OPC (Other People's Cookies) here on my Pinterest board.  I got a couple of new cookie cutters this year, a large tree with a star on top, and a set of three Ninjabread men.  Lars and Anders were very excited about the Ninjabread men.  It would be impossible to exaggerate their level of Ninjabread men excitement, in fact.  They were downright giddy about the Ninjabread men.  If you have little boys in your kitchen, I strongly recommend the Ninjabread men -- and you can get the cookie cutters right here. 

Lars Cutting Out Ninjabread Cookies

So, how did it all turn out?  My mom had to come to the rescue when it was time to roll out the dough, and her tried-and-true pastry cloth and little knit rolling pin sock won hands-down over my fancy Williams Sonoma silicone rolling pin and silicone pastry mat.  My gingerbread dough needed more flour because it was too sticky, and my sugar cookie dough needed a little milk because it was so dry that it was crumbling apart when I tried to roll it.  Once the doughs were the right consistency they were pretty easy to handle. 

Royal Icing, tinted Yellow with AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring

The Royal Icing was an adventure, but it came out okay.  I had a tough time getting a true red color until I read this baking blogger's instructions and discovered that the frosting will darken gradually as it dries.  I was also grateful that I'd ordered the AmeriColor gel food colors to tint my frosting, so I was able to get a nice, deep black for Santa boots and snowman details, as well as a medium brown for my Christmas tree stumps. 

Frosting Tubes Filled & Ready to Go

Another challenge was getting the icing into the little bottles and tube contraptions once I'd mixed it up.  My solution was to spoon the frosting into plastic Ziplock sandwich bags, squeeze the air out and seal the baggie, then snip off a corner so I could "pipe" the frosting into the various containers.  However, I made the mistake of mixing up and tinting most of the frosting the night before I planned for the kids to decorate, so I could get my "trials and errors" out of the way ahead of time.  Unfortunately, the icing really needs to be used right away.  The frostings from the night before were too runny the next day. 

Anders and Grammy Rolling Out Sugar Cookie Dough

There's a wonderful tutorial on decorating with Royal Icing on the King Arthur Flour blog here, and an even better updated tutorial by the same author that I just found right here (wish I'd seen these pictures of what the icing consistency should be before I made mine).  I decided that the cookie shapes we most enjoy decorating are the simplest ones, like snowflakes, bells, candy canes, and stars.  I liked the reindeer in gingerbread because they only needed a red nose, a black eye, and a white tail and then they were perfect.  Next year I'm going to get a mitten and an ornament cookie cutter, because I enjoyed making patterns on cookies more than fussing with multicolored Santas and angels that seldom come out looking as good as the cookies you envisioned in your mind.  Oh, and I think I'll limit frosting to two or three colors at a time next year, so I can do a thick and thin (for flooding) version of each frosting color.  This year I mixed up red, white, green, blue, yellow, orange, black, and brown, all at once, in an in-between consistency.  The frosting went on too thickly in large areas that we were trying to fill in, but was still too runny to get really sharp detail.

My Best Efforts: Rebecca's Christmas Cookies

Oh, and all those sugars and sprinkles I bought?  We hardly made a dent in them.  My favorite was the white sugar that I sprinkled on the edges of my snowman.  I also flocked a blue snowman scarf with glitter.  And I love how my Ninja Santa came out. 

Grammy and Bernie Decorating Cookies

Well, you'd think that by noon on Christmas Eve, I'd be done baking cookies.  You'd be wrong.  I have a whole batch of crackled molasses sugar cookie dough in the fridge, ready to be shaped into balls and rolled in sugar for baking.  I am also in my bathrobe, and -- horror of horrors! -- I have been so obsessed with cookie baking that I am NOT DONE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING YET!!!  I have to hop in the shower, get dressed, and then go to the mall, yes, the MALL on CHRISTMAS EVE, to get a couple of last-minute gifts for a certain difficult-to-shop-for husband of mine. 

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Wish me luck at the mall!

Merry Christmas 2011: The Christmas Card Post

Last year I indulged in misty-eyed nostalgia for what I consider to be an endangered species, the vintage Christmas card that is actually a card rather than a photo postcard, and which actually wishes the recipient a Merry Christmas rather than a bland, politically-correct Happy Holiday.  If you're so young that you don't remember what real Christmas cards are supposed to look like, you can read last year's Christmas card post and see some beautiful examples of vintage Christmas cards here. 

Christmas Past, at least the way we remember or imagine it from the present, was simpler, less commercialized, more personal and more family and community oriented than it is today.  It was A Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, and It's A Wonderful Life.  This year, however, I'm sharing this 1952 Ronald Reagan Christmas ad for Chesterfield cigarettes as a reminder that, then as now, Hollywood is in the dream business, and films are magical mirrors that show audiences an idealized reflection of their society.  I mean, seriously?!  When I romanticized those magical 1950s era Christmases from The Good Old Days, I wasn't thinking about cartons of "Christmas card" cigarettes under the tree!!

Yes, I still miss real Christmas cards and I still feel annoyed rather than touched by the cards I receive from the HV/AC company and the dry cleaner (wishing me prosperity so I can continue to shop with them). If you are one of my few remaining family or friends who sends me a Christmas card with a pretty Christmas picture on the front, please know that I am absolutely delighted to receive it, even if you just signed your name and didn't have time to write a Christmas letter.  Perhaps the newer tradition of Christmas photocards is one that our children and grandchildren may look back on fondly as what Christmas cards "should" be.  With families and friends as spread out across the globe as they are today, there are some smiling faces we only get to see on Facebook and Christmas cards anymore.  I also realize that it takes a lot of effort and advance planning for families to get that perfect holiday photo and have the cards printed up on time for Christmas (is that what you people were working on while I was obsessing over turkey and side dishes last month?).

Christmas Card Ornament, photo courtesy of ScoutyGirl

If I do get any old-style Christmas cards this year, I'm saving every single one of them.  My little sister reminded me the other day that we used to recycle Christmas cards for an ornament craft project at my grandmother's house, and I found a tutorial that refreshed my memory on how to do it right here at ScoutyGirl.  In fact, I just had a flash of inspiration for this project -- if I don't have enough Christmas cards to cut up, why not print my own?  All those images of vintage Christmas cards that I tracked down and posted about last year right here could be printed on heavy card stock and used to supplement the cards that come in the mail.  There are loads of images on the internet that would be perfect for this.  I can't wait to do this with my kids over Christmas break -- thanks for the idea, Janice the Manice!

By the way, if you haven't done your Christmas cards yet, there's still time.  I just ordered mine online; with express shipping I should have them by the middle of next week.  (My favorite online sources for Christmas cards are the museum shops at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago).  I'll probably be watching those old Christmas movies while I sign and address my Christmas cards, but I'll try to remember that the best Christmas is always THIS Christmas, this gift of time off from work, school, and other obligations when we can relax with our loved ones and be reminded of what really matters.  Yesterday we had The Santa Claus 2 on while I was mixing up cookie dough, the one where Tim Allen has to get married by Christmas Eve or else he can't be Santa anymore.  When they got to the proposal scene and Santa said that Christmas would end if the lady didn't say yes, Anders piped up, "No it wouldn't!  Jesus would still come without Santa!"  Yay, Anders!

Whether your family celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah, or another holiday at this time of year, may God bless you with his gifts of love, forgiveness, and salvation and keep you safe and healthy.  Merry Christmas!