Mama Squirrel's Twelve Days of Christmas Crafting

About once a year, most years, I go a little crazy making things. It's fun having everything out at once, using a piece of fabric for maybe more than one project. I like to wait for the November Handmade Holidays series on Sew Mama Sew, and some of the things pictured here were featured on this year's posts.

I don't have anyone small enough to make toys for, so most of the things I made this year turned out to be tree ornaments. Some of them are going to get packaged together, and others will decorate gifts or dress up food items. And we'll keep a few for our own tree.

Mama Squirrel's Twelve Days of Christmas Crafting

(Sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)

In the month of November, this is what I made:

One notebook cover

I posted about making this here. At this point I planned to be done all the sewing and crocheting for this season, but I enjoyed making this so much that I collected up my other leftover fabric (even the scoops cut out from the roll warmers), and have plans to make a couple more.

Two pocket houses

This pattern came from Holiday Crafts (Better Homes and Gardens), The credit says, "Design by Amy Sinibaldi; nanacompany.typepad.com." 

The houses are made to hang on the wall, with pockets across the front to hold a small wooden spoon, recipe cards, or maybe candy canes. The flowers in the magazine pattern were fabric yo-yos; I used buttons instead.

Three packs of Orange Tic-Tacs (or Snowman Noses)

Printing out and gluing on labels barely qualifies as a craft, but I needed three of something. The printables are at SomewhatSimple.com.

Four Advent candles

I found the photograph of these doily-wrapped jar candles in Holiday Crafts (Better Homes and Gardens), but the original source is a post from three years ago at Shabby Sweet Cottage. I decided to make it four candles instead of three, to represent the four weeks of Advent; our tags will be turned around to show Hope, Faith, Joy, and Love, one each week.

I did not have the metal-rimmed tags called for (I've heard you can buy them at Staples), or letter stamps, or German glass glitter, so I made my own version of the tags with the computer printer, cardstock, and a glitter-glue pen.

Five roll warmers / basket liners

Tutorial: Bread Basket Cover at Patchwork Posse. I used a combination of donated fabric and Wal-Mart fat quarters to make bowl or basket liners. When I made the first one (so actually number six), I somehow didn't realize that there were supposed to be four scoops on the edges, and I cut just one. I decided I actually liked my bowl liner that way, so I'm keeping it even if it's a "mistake."

Six felt birds

Tutorial: Felt Bird Ornament, Six Ways, at ReFabulous. The only real change I made to the pattern was to make my birds double-sided: they each have two wings and two eyes instead of just one. I used fusible backing to give the wings more body.

Seven turtle screen cleaners

Tutorial: Turtle Screen Cleaner  for electronic gadgets. The original didn't have eyes, but I thought black beads would add more personality. I also added loops so they could be hung up or attached to things.

(He doesn't have eyes on the bottom of his head; those are just knots from sewing the beads on.)

Eight patchwork trees

A post about making the trees

Nine Christmas cards

I blogged about those here.

Ten country stars

I had a piece of fabric, a piece of fusible backing, and a star-of-David cookie cutter. After I ironed the backing to the fabric, I traced the star as many times as I could on the backing, and cut them out. Because of the stiff backing, I couldn't turn them inside out, so I just zigzagged around the edges. Afterwards, I sewed buttons in the middles, and made bows from that same dollar-store brown yarn.

Eleven crocheted pine cones

The pattern is from Planet June. (I downloaded it a couple of years ago and then didn't have a chance to use it.) I had a bit of brown yarn left from old projects, and then I found this strange-scratchy-textured stuff at the dollar store while I was buying the candles. I don't think you'd want mittens made out of it, but it's perfect for cones.

Twelve crocheted hearts

Technically twenty-four hearts, since each ornament is made from two red hearts single-crocheted together. The pattern is from the Happier Than a Pig in Mud blog. It works up very quickly with worsted-weight yarn (I used Red Heart SuperSaver). 

The End.