Is it that time already?
It is now the start of November, and we are still in a semi lockdown situation with COVID. We are all pretty fed up with the whole thing or starting to accept that this could be the ‘new normal’. I know that I don’t want to accept either option, but 2020 has been a year that we want to forget. It is hard to believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away and we may not be able to have our customary Christmas celebrations. As we may not be able to socialise, it will be a very quiet Christmas for many of us.
I have already started to accept that it will be a quiet Christmas and we may not have the same day planned as we usually would have. However, I am still planning on putting up my decorations and creating a lovely peaceful Christmas theme in the house, so we have something to look forward to.
I know I don’t want to be dwelling on what we are missing out on with the restrictions, BUT, focusing on What we are thankful for.
During the months coming up to Christmas I love making new decorations to put up in the house and even making Christmas themed gifts for friends and family. I really start to get into the whole Christmas spirit in this way. I thought I would share with you, photos from our past Christmases and all the handmade Christmas decorations I have up around the house. I take down all of my pictures on the walls and replace them with Christmas themed wall-hangings and pictures. The collection grows each year as I usually end up doing a new one (sometimes two or three) each year. Some of them are 15 years old. These are from when we moved to Northern Ireland, though I did bring one or two really special ones. It was nice starting again and building up the collection each year. Since I had the opportunity to ‘rebuild’ my Christmas collection, I decided that most of it would be handmade. Our tree decorations are all handmade over the years and they bring so memories each year as we decorate the year, as we had spent many an evening as a family enjoying the crafting and being together.
Future Designs
I love to design Christmas designs/patterns. My favourite designs would be the Christmas mice that I did last year and they have proved to be very popular to everyone. I have plans to add to the collection and unfortunately I was unable to do the one I had planned next …. But I will be working on that one in the New Year to be added to the design collection. I know that I am a bit behind this year in releasing new Christmas designs but the year has crept up on me ….
I have quite a few Christmas themed designs that I did last year and never got round to actually releasing them so I thought it would be a great opportunity to do it this month and give you the opportunity to start making some new Christmas themed designs for either yourself or someone else. There is a good variety coming up, from Inktense/Stitchery designs; Redwork designs and machine piecing. I am teaching a Whitework workshop (hopefully) this month where I designed a special Christmas themed whitework design. I will be releasing this design in a kit form as well this month.
So there are plenty of new designs and projects to look forward to. I look forward to showing you sneak photos closer to their releases throughout the month of November.