It always amazes me how quickly things move on from Christmas. I LOVE Christmas, but come to New Year’s Day and I’m ridiculously keen to get the decorations down.
Like half of the World, I am currently drinking only water, eating lettuce (in an attempt to undo the festive excesses) and dreaming of Spring.
It’s the same with my sewing work, I’m all for flowers and bright, sunny colours, I’m done with Winter tones.
Despite being away, I squeezed in some sewing over the holidays. The floral cushion was a little something for me, it took such a short time and I’ve had both the cushion pad and the tapestry hanging around for months and months waiting. I do find it difficult to carve out any time for sewing for myself.
I also managed to run up a batch of new Linen Rabbit Egg Cosies, because…
ta-da! I made Country Living again. Can’t lie, chuffed to bits.
I did make more of the ones featured, with the woodland print ears, but I still had the Liberty Tana Lawn out from my Fox and Badger making laying on my worktop and I couldn’t resist making some with ‘Mirabelle’ ears too.
I also remembered that I have one of the very original rabbits left from years ago, with the first ears (I ‘improved’ the design with the second batch as it bugged me that it was so difficult to make the ears neat and symmetrical) so he’s here for giving away to anyone that comments on this post. I guess I’ll randomly pick a name on the 26th January.
I’m not sure if I’ll make more, even with the newer ears they are a bu*%er to stitch evenly and the linen I use is also a nightmare to iron, but I can imagine lots more Liberty Tana versions in my head and once I get a plan I find it difficult to ignore. We’ll see.
I guess it’s just an extension of how my general taste has changed. This house was all white with wooden floors (a definite and intended Scandi feel) and although I’ve always liked bright accents of colour, colour is now creeping onto the walls too with bold colours in the kids’ bedrooms and green walls in mine.
Some of the old favourites are back, though, including baubles on ‘the dog’.
and a knitted Santa that my Gran made and that was always in my room at Christmas when I was a kid.
The Pelham puppets are up again in the kitchen…the star lights never actually came down!
And some of my really old decorations have gone on a tinsel tree in the kitchen this year.
When I think of Christmas I think of the colours of a box of Quality Street, all foil and bright with purples, greens, blues and golds. I guess it’s a childhood nostalgia thing. I recently bought a box of Quality Street to use as props for photos (of the Christmas Stockings) and it sadly reminded me that although I like the wrapper colours I don’t actually like the chocolates inside!
So instead, I’m going to think of this bowl of Lindt chocolates bought for me as a gift last weekend….there is an entire Lindt shop in Bluewater – who knew! I just LOVE the colours (and the chocolate) and I have some plans for Shop makes for next season that will definitely be inspired by these.
I sold out of all ‘Woodland Animals’ after the Badgers were in Country Living so it seemed right to make more. It was originally an experiment in how long it takes to make them (let’s just put it this way, I am earning waaaaayyyyy below minimum wage) but I just kept going with new colour versions, as they were selling as quickly I could list them.
First, there were some pink ‘Betsy’ boys. I’m not sure why I’ve never made pink fox suits before, it seems like a winner and they flew straight out of the shop.
Then, after 
I haven’t made girls for ages and it was quite good fun. They have red ric-rac sandwiched between the hem and I used some crochet flowers I already had rather than making new ones with my Hana flower maker. One flew straight off to the Netherlands!
Next, came a batch of bright blue boys. 
All the linen is offcuts from apron making and it felt really good to finally use it up. I have a habit of keeping all of my trimmings (in this case, quite big bits of trimmings, so well worth keeping!) but I can go a bit overboard with my reluctance to throw things away. The tweed wool for the bodies was also the final length and I (forced myself to) throw the scrap bag of leftovers from this once I’d finished my last fox. They really were little bits that were too small for even fox ears so it felt quite good to finally say goodbye to the bag which has sat in my scrap drawer for years now.
There was a little badger interlude here as I’d had quite a few emails asking if I’d make more so I did one last batch of those.
One of the reasons I made new foxes over badgers or wolves is so I didn’t have to make the brooches. It isn’t that I don’t like them, in fact, I think they finish the animals’ suits off in style, it’s simply that they take a really long time to make (they take the same time as a full-sized flower brooch) and I don’t really charge much extra, so it really is a labour of love.
There was one exception. A lovely lady has bought a lot of the Woodland Animals asked if I could make a red fox in mustard. I pretty much never make to order as my life can get a little stressed and I hate the idea of letting anyone down so I decided years ago to always say no, but as I was making badgers in mustard anyway I figured I would make an exception (and I was happy to do so, I should add!)
Mr Mustard Fox got a special Liberty Betsy cravat in a colourway I imported from Japan. I only have a short length of it but it was perfect with the yellow linen. I then made a matching green auricula brooch. I have to say, I was really pleased with him….it’s a bit of a shame the weather was so crappy and dark so I couldn’t get a decent photo but he’s gone off to his new home.
It started as an idea a couple of years ago. I had bought some vintage (I’m going to use the word with abandon now) napkins when I was buying old Christmas stuff on Ebay and I couldn’t help but think they’d make great cuffs for Christmas stockings.
The plan was to combine them with some stash busting, specifically reducing my tweeds and a few Christmas cottons that I have. The problem is, as always, I tend to imagine the finished thing in my head and I then struggle to compromise on that vision.
The red tweed looked too ‘dull’ so I considered some linen, also from my stash, but that felt too similar in texture to the linen cuff. I like contrasts of texture 🙂
I ended up buying some bouclé wool in a crimson red. I also abandoned using the Christmas printed cotton for lining as the wool is a little stretchy and I wanted a matching stretchy lining so I opted for some nice, cosy, green brushed cotton.
I’m not sure if it show in the photos, but I added a little shaping to the top cuff to make it kick out slightly (I like to think it’s these details that make my work my own).
Then I embarrassed myself by buying the newly arrived Christmas stuff from the local supermarket as photo props – coins, Quality Street, a Lindt Santa and some walnuts and oranges.
But I liked the photos taken with some of my vintage decorations best.
The photos look really dark on here…it’s one of the problems when photographing red and at this time of year.
I’m very lucky that I’ve been in the magazine before (a few times, actually) but not for some time. In fact, I think it’s a lot harder to get into magazines in general these days, there is so much competition in the handmade market that it’s difficult to stand out and it’s increasingly important to keep up any marketing which is an area I really struggle to find the passion to maintain.
So, welcome, Mr Fox (in a Green Dandy Suit!).
These started with some amazing Liberty Tana Lawn that I bought and imported from Japan. Why are all the nicest Tana Lawns only available abroad? I’ve never figured this out, it seems wrong, especially as it’s such an iconic British brand. Anyway, at much expense my single meter arrived (back in 2010!!!) and it was yelling animal cravats at me, so that’s what I made.
With the addition of real leather buttons (I bought the entire remaining stock from Cath Kidston a few years ago when they went into the sale at a silly low price – one of my best buys as before that a lot of the leather buttons I used were vintage and they were getting hard to source at a sensible price).
There isn’t a lot else to add. Of all the foxes I’ve made, these are my favourite combination (but they don’t beat the wolves!), I really do adore the cravat fabric and bright green is very much my colour. They seem like a summer animal to me.
It’s likely that the remaining ‘
I’ve been making them in some form or another since 2010, but they take an enormous amount of time to make and the fabric alone is quite expensive so there is little profit.
They really are a labour of love.
There are still a few to be found in 
Christmas things are coming next!
And what shoes they are. Quiet and understated they are not. They’re from 
Here is the rest of the outfit with me attempting to smile (I don’t like taking my own photo). I put these photos up on Instagram and some eagle-eyed folk spotted I have my usual 
The opera was a delight. I must admit to finding the ‘story’ pace a bit slow in the first half but the music was beautiful and the choral sections were especially good.
The staging was magnificent! 
There was a moment in the second half where I thought we’d swapped to watching an episode of League of Gentlemen (anyone who has seen Glyndebourne’s version of Saul knows exactly what I’m talking about here…’bitty’ *shudder*) but it just added to the slightly bonkers feel of the whole thing.
I especially loved the raked ‘soil’ floor, the contrasts of colour against the black background and the mix of modern and period costume. Fabulous.
We’re ready, though. The enthusiasm has gone now for all the little necessities of primary school; I’ll be happy not to have to magic a costume out of thin air with no notice to be worn for just one day, and I dream of not doing the school run (although with two spectrum children that won’t be possible for a good while yet, in fact, it’ll get worse as I’ll have a double pick-up – they will be in two different schools – with daily motorway drive then a stressful drive directly through town, between the schools).
One thing we stopped doing ages ago was making teachers gifts. We started off well but then dropped into the habit of adding money to the class joint pot (actually, we used to do both). Looking through old photos whilst cleaning out my library I’m amazed at how much effort we went to, so here are a few (click on the titles to go to the relevant posts):
(when were my kids EVER this cute!!!)
I can’t find a post for these but I remember I embroidered messages on the back of them for each teacher.
