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Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

November 19, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour

Welcome to the Easy Christmas Decorations To Sew in Under an Hour blog hop!

It’s a lovely idea to make things for Christmas, but it can be difficult to find the time when everything’s so busy.

I used to have this perfect idea of how I wanted Christmas to be at my house with lots of things I’d made, and then feel annoyed with myself that I’d not managed to do even half the things I’d wanted to!

One solution to this is to start early. I even did this one year (it was the year of the dinosaur hats when I still only had 3 boys!), but I don’t like making Christmas things when Christmas is still some way off. Also I like autumn and I want to enjoy it as a season in its own right.

So the other option is to choose things that are quick to make and not too complicated.

If this is you too, you’ve come to the right place!

Here are 8 ideas for things you can make for Christmas that are both quick and easy. I’ve included the links below and I encourage you to pop over to these talented ladies’ blogs to have a look.

All the links will open in a new tab, so you don’t have to worry about getting lost in the internet jungle!

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

easy christmas decorations blog hop

This one’s mine :).

It’s made from tulle and scraps of cotton fabric, and a 30 cm embroidery hoop. I wanted to make something that I could put up straight away and leave up for the rest of winter.

There are downloadable templates (in exchange for an email address) and you can find the instructions here.

Embroidered Snowflake Felt Ornaments

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

These lovely felt ornaments by Lisa from Cucicucicoo are made from scraps of felted jumpers and embroidered with white thread. There’s a link in the post to the embroidery pattern.

If you don’t have any jumpers that have suffered a mishap in the wash, or any that you have felted on purpose, you could always use ordinary felt instead.

The tutorial for the embroidered snowflake ornaments is here.

Fabric Christmas Tree Ornament

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

This tutorial from Domenica from Easy Sewing For Beginners shows how to make Christmas tree decorations from scraps of Christmas fabric.

She uses ricrac to decorate them, and there’s one with a star button at the top! Obviously you could something else if you don’t have ricrac. As you won’t need very much, it’s a good way to use up little bits of ribbon.

The post is here.

Christmas Pudding Decoration

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

If you’re not British and you don’t know what a Christmas pudding is, you’re missing out! It’s a delicious, very rich fruit pudding that usually needs to be steamed for several hours if you make it yourself in the traditional way, or warmed up in the microwave if you buy one from Marks and Spencer.

These decorations are made using scraps of fabric and a little embroidery hoop. Vicky suggests putting them on a card as a little extra thing for somebody to hang on their own tree.

There are templates for the applique, and the post can be found here.

DIY Christmas Coasters

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

These coasters by Damjana from Apple Green Cottage are made in an ingenious way.

You know how annoying it is trying to get all the edges neat when you’ve had to leave one open so that you could turn it the right way out?

These coasters are made in such a way that you don’t have to do this!

Damjana’s coasters are made from fabric that are Christmas colours but are not specifically Christmas prints, so they can be used at other times too.

You can find the tutorial here.

Fabric Ribbon Candy Ornaments

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

Staci from Crafty Staci has made these fabric ribbon ornaments. I’ve seen something similar before made from ribbon, but these are made in a different way using 2 strips of fabric in contrasting prints.

Staci has used lovely fabric in candy cane colours, but you could use whatever you have or what you would like to use to fit in with your Christmas colour scheme.

The tutorial is here.

Mini Gift Bag

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

It’s an uncomfortable truth about Christmas that it generates an awful lot of waste.

One way to cut down on stuff that ends up in landfill is to make beautiful handmade decorations like the ones in this blog hop! They’ll last and you won’t want to throw them away just because you’re bored of them.

Another way to reduce waste at Christmas is to wrap presents in something that can be reused.

Julie from Sum of Their Stories has written this tutorial for making little gift bags from Christmas fabric. She even suggests mixing Christmas prints with plain fabric to make them go further.

The instructions for making the bags are here.

Felt Christmas Tree Ornament

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

This Christmas tree decoration from Lulu and Celeste is a nice little project if you want something that can be sewn by hand.

Sometimes it’s nice to have a project that you can pick up and work on when you have a few minutes, then put it down and come back to it later. This is that kind of project!

There’s a downloadable template for the tree. The post is here.

I hope you feel inspired to make some easy Christmas decorations. Happy making!

quick and easy christmas decorations to sew in under an hour

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Filed In: Blog, Christmas / Tagged: easy, quick

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

November 13, 2019 · 15 Comments

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

It’s fun to make things for Christmas, but it can be difficult to find the time, especially when it’s such a busy time of year anyway.

I actually gave up trying to make a lot of things for Christmas a few years ago. I never managed to live up to my Pinterest fuelled expectations of having a perfectly decorated, tidy house full of calm, happy people, including myself!

Christmas is nice but not if you’re stressed. So now I focus on what is necessary, and do some other bits and pieces if I have time.

One obvious option when you’re busy is to make things that are straightforward and quick to make.

Another less obvious thing to do is to make things that aren’t too Christmassy. That way, you won’t feel too weird making it in October, hanging it up straight away and leaving it up until spring!

It also has the added bonus that it will help to reduce the horrible empty feeling in your house when you’ve put everything away.

This embroidery hoop Christmas decoration is one of these that you can get out when the weather turns cold and leave up until the clocks change back to summer time.

Tartan is cheerful at Christmas, but also in the autumn and the rest of the winter. And deer live in the woods all year round!

It’s easy to make and you might already have the fabric you need already.

To save time, the templates can be downloaded at the end of the post.

The deer was fiddly to cut out, but you could always use a precut deer instead, or cut your own if you have a die cutting machine.

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

How to Make an Embroidery Hoop Christmas Decoration

You Will Need

A 30 cm embroidery hoop (Amazon have them here. This is an affiliate link)
Net or tulle in white or pale grey
Scraps of fabric. I used tartan for the deer and grey for everything else.
Ribbon

Instructions

Use the templates to cut out the pieces. You’ll need 1 hill and 1 deer. Mine has 7 trees, but you can use as many or as few as you like. The templates can be downloaded at the end of the post.

Cut a piece of your background fabric that’s larger than your hoop. The hoop I used was 30 cm in diameter and I cut a square about 45 cm x 45 cm.

Using the hoop as a guide, position the hill on the background and pin. Turn it upside down so that the tulle is on the top and use a zigzag stitch to sew the hill in place.

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

Now position the trees. It’s up to you where you put them, but bear in mind that it will look most effective if there’s some space between the trees for the light to come through.

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

Once you are happy with the arrangement and you’ve pinned them on, sew the trees onto the tulle with the trees underneath and the tulle upwards.

Sewing it this way means that you won’t catch all of the long edges of the trunks if you have some overlapping. So turn your work over and sew those long edges.

The next step is to pin the deer on and sew him in place. I used a straight stitch and I appliqued him on the right side up. The antlers are fiddly, so I sewed straight up past his ears and made a line of stitches up into each antler.

embroidery hoop christmas decoration
embroidery hoop christmas decoration

It might seem at this point a little bit bumpy and uneven. But how many times have you been in a wood and everything’s been perfect? As Bob Ross says, a wonky tree has a story and at least it won’t be cut down and made into a telegraph pole! Any imperfections here are what will give your embroidery hoop Christmas decoration rustic charm :).

Put your design into the embroidery hoop. Check that the metal screw is at the top. Gently pull at the edges so that the fabric is taut.

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

Trim the excess off so that you’re left with about 2 cm all the way round. With a needle and thread, sew a running stitch around the excess tulle, keeping close to the hoop. Pull it tight to gather it and tie off the ends.

You might need to trim it down a bit more, but like I’ve already said, the aim here is rustic and charming, not perfect!

Tie some twine to the metal part of the hoop and attach a bow. I had a bow already that I used from this wreath that I found in my cupboard of Christmas decorations!

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

Hang your embroidery hoop Christmas decoration up in a window and enjoy it until well into February!

embroidery hoop christmas decoration

If You Have More Time…

You could sew more trees over the deer so that he’s in the forest, not just standing in front of it.

You could embroider branches either by hand or with the sewing machine.

Using the sewing machine or by hand, you could add more stitches to the tree trunks to give them some texture.

If you have some white or gold embroidery thread, you could embroider some stars.


If You Have Less Time…

Cutting out the deer was fiddly and took some time, so another option would be to use a precut deer (a felt one would be fine), or if you have a die cutting machine, you might be able to make your own more quickly.

You could glue the farbic into the hoop instead of gathering it.

If you make one, I’d love to see it! You could email me a picture at teaandasewingmachine@gmail.com, or post it onto the Tea and a Sewing Machine Facebook page, or post it on Instagram and tag me (@annaatteaandasewingmachine) so that I’ll see it.

To Download the Templates

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Filed In: Blog, Christmas, Sewing Projects / Tagged: Christmas, how to

Tips For Using Digital Sewing Patterns

November 9, 2019 · Leave a Comment

tips for using digital sewing patterns

Tips For Using Digital Sewing Patterns

Often when I make clothes for myself using sewing patterns, it doesn’t go so well.

Even this coat that I made a few years ago had some issues, although I considered it a success and I wore it for a number of years until it became too big.

Sizing issues, having to do things the “right” way rather than the easiest way, technical difficulties with things like collars and getting bored with all the steps have all caused me a certain amount of irritation when I’ve made things with patterns!

It was my frustration with patterns that lead me to attempt to make my things for myself without using a pattern. This ultimately resulted in me writing 3 ebooks, Sewing Clothes Without a Pattern, A Basic Guide to Drafting Pattern Pieces and Designing and Making a Dress From Scratch (you can find out more about my ebooks here!).

Anyway, I decided that I wanted to make a top for myself. I considered drafting the pattern myself, but there’s a lot going on at the moment with my boys and things at home. My energy is limited, so I decided to have another crack at using a pattern.

My friend Paula recommended Colette patterns ages ago, so I had a look to see whether they had anything suitable.

There was! It’s this top, Elmira. It was just what I was looking for!

I had a good look on the internet but I could only find it as a digital pattern. I’ve never used a digital pattern before, but I’ll give most things a try and I really liked the top!

tips for using digital sewing patterns

Hang On, a Digital What Now?

A digital pattern is a pattern that you buy online and it’s delivered to your computer. You then open up the file and print it out yourself at home.

It’s a brilliant idea.

You can start straight away without having to wait for the postman or go traipsing into town.
You can buy patterns from Etsy or directly from people’s websites and feel good for supporting small businesses.
If you mess it up, or cut out the wrong size, or if your kids ruin it, or if your husband spills gravy all over it, or if you gain or lose weight and you want to make another one in a different size, you can just print it out again.

Unfortunately it’s also a minefield of potential problems, which I’ll come to in a minute.

I’ve successfully negotiated my way through the minefield to making a top that I like, that I wore on holiday with an orange tutu in a wood.

tips for using digital sewing patterns

The instructions for making the tulle skirt are here. Go on, you’ll feel like a 4 year old at a birthday party every time you wear it!

Problems Using a Digital Pattern

The first problem I encountered was printing it out. My printer will usually print things in such a way that it will fill the page with whatever it is printing.

Most of the time this is fine, and as American paper sizes are different to British ones, I don’t have to worry about things looking weird or wrong.

Unfortunately with a pattern, this is a problem! It means that the size of the pieces that come out of the printer are a different size to the originals.

When the first page came out of the printer, thankfully I spotted that it had a test square on it. I wouldn’t have thought to check otherwise! I hadn’t I would have ended up with something that was the wrong size.

Problem number 2 was matching the lines. For some reason, the lines didn’t entirely line up! As somebody in Instagram suggested, I matched the lines rather than the pages, but there were still some problems. In the end, I decided to focus on matching the lines for my size as best I could, knowing that I would need to check the fit anyway.

Problem number 3 was sticking it all together. If you live in a house that has at least one nice big room this is probably less of an issue, but I live in an oldish house that has small rooms, plus 4 kids, lego and various messes all over the place.

I did manage to stick all the pieces together on the floor of the front room, but if the pattern pieces had been any bigger I would have had a problem.

Problem 4 was this.

tips for using digital sewing patterns

Problem 5 was cutting out the pieces and discovering that I’d not used enough sellotape on the joins, so that the bits were barely held together. This wasn’t too much of a problem while I was cutting out, but as I couldn’t do the pattern and cutting out parts all in one go, I had to fold it up and dump it on a chair until I could come back to it. That’s where there ended up being problems and things needed to be restuck.

So if you’re new to digital patterns, here are my tips for using them.

Tips For Using Digital Patterns

When you’ve bought your pattern, you’ll need to download it. Usually the link will either be in an email, or there will be a link to where you can download it.

Everything I download on my laptop automatically gets sent to the downloads folder. If you’re a windows user, you’ll probably have one too.

Once you’ve found the file, it might need extracting if it was sent as a zip or compressed file. Double click on it and it will ask you whether you want to extract it. Saving it to the same folder is probably easiest as you’ll be able to find it next time.

Open the files. Usually they are in pdf form. On my laptop, if I double click on the file it opens in Google Chrome. Otherwise, you could use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. You just need to have it open so that you can print it.

Tell your computer to print it. When the dialog box opens, check that it’s set to print at 100%. You might need to uncheck the “Fit to Page” box.

Print the first page and check that the test square is the size that it’s supposed to be. If it’s not, check your settings again.

You’ll probably need to trim the pages down a bit so that the lines of the pattern will join when you stick them.

Sort the pages out in order and stick them together with tape. Make sure that you match the lines up of your size, and use enough tape so that they stay together after you’ve cut them out!

Cut out the pieces as you would a pre printed pattern. If the lines don’t entirely match, my honest advice is to fudge it! Those edges will be in the seam allowance and you’ll have to check the fit anyway.

Do you have other tips for using digital sewing patterns? Leave them in the comments below!

tips for using digital sewing patterns

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Filed In: Blog, Tips and Techniques / Tagged: beginners

DIY Autumn Wreath

October 31, 2019 · Leave a Comment

diy autumn wreath

DIY Autumn Wreath

One of the things I really like is coming home and seeing a wreath on my door.

To be honest, there’s not an awful lot of other things to like about the outside of my house at the moment. But if nothing else, at least my front door is pretty!

diy autumn wreath

My latest wreath is one I made from some bits and pieces I bought from Dollar Tree while we were in the USA in August.

For those of you who are fellow English people, Dollar Tree is a lot like Poundland, except there’s more craft stuff.

The lovely leaf lights that are now on my dresser came from Dollar Tree, along with the flowers and the ribbon I used to make this DIY autumn wreath.

The wreath form is the one I used to make this wreath. I just pulled the flowers off and put them in a safe place in case I want to use them again in the future.

It was very easy and it didn’t take me very long. An hour would be plenty of time! If you live in the UK and you’re not likely to be visiting a Dollar Tree any time soon, you might find similar flowers and things in Wilko.

Instructions For Making a DIY Autumn Wreath

You Will Need

A willow wreath form
Artificial flowers and leaves
Wired ribbon (I used just under 3 metres)
A pipe cleaner or wire (for the bow)
Twine or similar for hanging your wreath up
Old scissors or pliers

Instructions

Make the bow. Doing this first will allow you to work out how much space you have to fill with the flowers on either side. There’s no point sticking flowers into your wreath, only to find that you can’t see them because they’re covered up by the bow!

To make my bow I used this YouTube video.

diy autumn wreath

Cut the flowers, leaving 8-10 cm of stalk. With artificial flowers there’s usually wire inside the plastic. If you’re using scissors, you probably won’t be able to cut right the way through. Just cut through the plastic then bend the wire until it snaps. I’d recommend not using your best scissors! Otherwise use pliers.

diy autumn wreath

Push the flowers into the wreath. I started with the big ones, then I added the smaller ones. Lastly I added the leaves.

diy autumn wreath
diy autumn wreath
diy autumn wreath

Tie a loop for hanging.

diy autumn wreath

Tips

Wired ribbon is best because it’s much easier to shape the loops and bend them into where you want them to go.

Odd numbers look better than even, so try to use an odd number of flowers, especially the larger ones. It’s less noticeable with smaller flowers. I used 2 of the larger flowers, but as there’s one each side of the bow, that works!

Remember that the wreath is a pretty thing in itself! It’s fine to have some of it showing.

When it comes to larger flowers, you only need a few. Space them out and fill in the gaps with smaller flowers.

diy autumn wreath

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Filed In: Blog, Wreaths / Tagged: how to, wreath

Kids’ Stationery Giveaway

October 17, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Kids’ Stationery Giveaway

One of the things that makes a huge difference to the amount of sewing I do is being able to keep my sewing machine out.

I did have a corner of the living room, but we needed the space. Now I use the kitchen table. We have another table that we use for mealtimes, but on a Sunday hubby makes a roast dinner. This usually means gravy everywhere and, much as I like a roast dinner, I don’t want it on my sewing stuff! So I’ll move it upstairs on Sunday morning and get it out again later in the week.

Having access to it is what makes the difference. As well as being able to get to the sewing machine, I have fabric, thread, buttons, craft books, zips, elastic, pretty much everything I need to get started when inspiration strikes.

When it comes to kids, we want the same for them! Whether they are our children or our grandchildren, we want them to have access to the things they need.

Some of you will know that I have 4 boys, 2 at school and 2 who are home educated.

The ones who are at school have homework to do, and it’s much easier for them to get on and do it if they have the stuff they need to hand.

One of my kids is very arty. He loves to draw, so I do my best to make sure he has a supply of mechanical pencils and fineliners.

With the home educated boys, although they spend a nice amount of time at drama, forest school, rollerskating, karate and other home ed meetups, they do need to write sometimes! I want to encourage rather than coerce (it’s much easier for everybody if they actually want to do it!), and having nice stationery to use makes a difference.

Officestationery.co.uk are offering a chance to win a full stationery set and pencil case for your children or grandchildren. It includes the following:

2 x HB Graphite Pencils

2 x Ballpoint Pens (1x Black, 1 x Blue)

1 x Pencil

1 x Lead Refill

1 x Self-Centering Compass

1 x 15cm/6” Rule

2 x Set Squares

Large Sleeved Eraser

Sharpener

Yellow Highlighter

Helix Timetable

The giveaway will run from Thursday 17th October 2019 until midnight BST on Thursday 24th October. The details for entering are below!

Tea and a sewing machine halloween competition

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I'm Anna and I live in rural Norfolk in the UK. My mum taught me how to use a sewing machine when I was 10 and I haven't looked back! I love making all sorts of things and I hope you find inspiration here.

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