Happy Happy Joy Joy

I've had a lovely day, it involved sewing for a few hours then photographing the result. Have you seen these soft trees that are all the rage on some craft Blogs (well, on the ones I frequent anyway!) at the moment? The instructions are to be found on this fabulous blog . There is also a Flickr group here where people can post photos of their creations.

Anyway, these are my Soft Xmas Trees. I found a big booklet of upholstery samples at the back of my fabric stash, and thought they'd look nice as soft trees. I'm so happy with them, I don't know what it is about soft trees that I like so much, but I do. The symbolic concept of them just does it for me I think. The hardest thing about making them was to keep myself under control and not over-adorn them. I noticed that the photos of other people's soft trees that attracted me the most were the simplest ones, so I tried to stick with that myself.


After experimenting with strings of tiny plastic pearls, buttons, beads and trim, I finally decided upon a single crystal thingy pinned into the top of each tree - heck, what are they called again.... swarti something.... I'll go Google, hang on...
Swarovski crystal beads, that's what they are. I nicked them out of Meshell's button and bead box. It's ok, I confessed and she said that was fine. :-) Speaking of Meshell, she has also made some very nice, festive soft xmas trees and hers are here.

Because I made very small trees, I did change the way I made them after the first one. The instructions say to sew the cone side seam first and then sew on the circular base. I found it easier the sew the circle to the bottom edge of the open cone section first, then sew the side seam up, doing a bit at the bottom and a bit at the top, so the hole for turning inside out and for stuffing is about halfway down the cone. It made it a lot easier to pour the rice in the bottom too, as it can't fall out - unless you are silly like me and tip the still open tree upside down. :-)

All in all, a very pleasant way to spend the day.