Advent Calendar 2019

In November I made a new Advent Calendar as an example for the elder kids of my crafting classes. 

The felt stripes are just folded and sewn together on the sides to form little pockets of 6cm depth. Quite simple but effective!

I added some decorations like the stripe with the gnomes and the felt rein-deer.

The children of the crafting class managed equally well. It took us three sessions, but all finished for first of December.

For my kids I use like every year this calendar, but I filled the new one for my husband with chocolate and small notes. I realised that the pockets are not deep enough to hide the surprise and I put little paper-handkerchief pieces on top of every pocket so you don't spoil the surprise just by looking at it.

Happy pre-Christmas time to everyone!

A bientôt,

Jane

Pillow matching last quilt

Matching with the quilt I finished this summer (look here) I made a pillow case. One side I already quilted as a test piece in summer, when looking for the right quilting pattern. 

I decided against this pattern as it hasn't been boyish enough. In fact the words of my son had been "what are those wonky flowers?" :-)

I think the pattern is nice, but maybe not for a boy. Also I had to concentrate very hard on it to not get lost in the spirals, so for the blanket I am happy I chose another pattern. 

For the second side of the pillow I pieced something similar to the quilt top with scraps of it. 

I wanted to try out parallel lines. I once saw a quilt only quilted with straight lines and I liked the simple look. But again (and a bit expected) I realised that this is only possible to do proper with a walking food. I don't have one and it's not possible to fix one to my very old machine. But I love my machine and will never change it for a new one - so whenever I feel again like quilting straight, I will borrow the machine of a friend (she will know of which friend I am talking when reading this ;-)) 

Anyway, the zig-zag effect caused by pulling the fabric with the quilting slightly to one side and the other, has also some charm.

The piping (?right word?) for the edges of the pillow I made the first time myself, what is much easier than I thought.

Below the pillow is closed with a zipper.

The finished size is about 55x55cm.

As my son left his quilt always on our sofa, the pillow has a place there too and so I can enjoy it every day now :-)

A bientôt,

Jane

Nearly end of fall

Before fall ends completely (I've seen snow on the mountains today!), I will show you two seasonal crafts before starting Christmas blog-posts (I already sewed an advent calendar!):

This craft I did already a month ago for my crafting classes. Inspiration with the chestnut in the middle is from pinterest, but I added goggly eyes to make sure everyone recognizes it's a spider in the middle!

I had the idea to use different wool from bright to dark, but if you look from further away the cobweb look like a german flag ;)

Last week when I had to drive somewhere I had kind of that view on the countryside road:

I love when it's a bit foggy and the trees are looming in the grey! In addition with the birds gathering to fly south (a bit late, isn't it?), there had been so much ambiance!

The background is watercolors, the birds are drawn by hand and the trees are stamped on white paper (I made the stamp some years ago), cut out and glued to the picture.

As I had lot's of trees left (stamping is so much fun:-) I made also this card. It said that there is no "fall blues" as you can find color in the grey!

We had several ugly rainy days and the leaves are falling faster now. Soon it will be winter!

A bientôt,

Jane

Mini pumpkin

Have a look at the mini pumpkin (size of a big apple) that I carved and decorated for yesterdays "fête de la citrouille" = pumpkin feast in our village. 

A bientôt,

Jane

dry leaves meets doodle

Yesterday I found a little case with pressed leaves in a box with crafting stuff. They must have been there at least 3 years! Astonishingly they didn't fell to dust when I touched them! 

As I had a moment and have been anyway on the lookout for a new crafting idea, I decorated some leaves with pencils, glued them into my sketch book and started doodling around them with fine-liners.

A bientôt,

Jane

Drawing game

During the last visit of my mom we invented on a rainy indoor day a drawing game with the boys. 

Everyone had a piece of paper and the kids shield each working space off by putting folders upright, so everyone could make his drawings secretly. 

Then someone announced the first drawing theme. In the case I will show you it had been "giraffe". After everyone finished his giraffe-drawing he gave the paper to his neighbor and we announced the next theme that had been in this case "mosquito". Same as before: drawing and giving the paper to the next. The third theme had been "climbing plant" and the last "landscape". Then we rewealed all drawings and laughed about the mixed styles in every drawing. 

This is my paper. As I can't really draw realistic animals I only put in the neck of a giraffe, my mom adds the little mosquitos, son number 2 the fence with the climbing plants and the gardener and son number 1 put all together with his landscape.

These are the other 3 pictures. 

I love all of them! They are so unique and funny!

The boys loved the game and we had several other tours.

This are some other results. The themes had been: 1. latern, 2. tree, 3. person, 4. combining everything.

The photographs had been taken with my telephone, so the quality isn't very good.

You really need to try that out with your kids! It's lots of fun!

A bientôt,

Jane

Autumnal table decoration

Inspired by a table decoration I made several years ago (have a look in the past), I cut some left over wood bars to 20cm pieces, smoothed them, drilled holes, put them together, add dry plants and other stuff and ... voila:

This is the colored autumn version, that I prefer. Do you like the little dancer? But of course you can stay in one color scheme: 

This is more discrete as everything is blue, beige, brown. Here I like the book-page-feathers most.

I also made sets for the kids in my crafting classes that started again in the beginning of september. The assembling was very easy for them as I did the drilling of the bigger holes. The small ones for the flowers I let them do, but it happens very quick to drill the hole through the entire bar and not only until the middle. You might have recognised the yellow pearl in my deco piece?! That is where I drilled too far ;-)

With the kids I also made fairies and feathers in two different sessions. They had a lot of fun and I love their creative and very own way to decorate. You need to have a look at their creations!

In the beginning I planned to paint the wood a bit with indian-style patterns, but already mine didn't turn out nice, so I switched to masking tape. The advantage is that I can change it, whenever I want. So I will do maybe some Christmas table deco, I will first change the tape to something winterly.

I prefer the zig-zag way of putting the table deco, but you can also line it straight or in an arc. 

Enjoy the autumn as well!

A bientôt,

Jane