today's progress

You're such a good DIL!!! ;-) That is really cute!

Same here. I know I'm forgetting something...

Beverly

That is fabulous! If you lived near here, I would have given you an empty yarn cone to use. ;-)

Thank you very much. She really liked it. Did I tell y'all that while I was frantically stitching away they were at Target buying an angel for the tree??? LOL!!! They demoted that angel to nightlight (she holds "candles" in each hand and her skirt lights up) in the guest bedroom. ;)

I remembered!! PJ pants for the boy.

Sewing-wise I'm down to one more zip up fleece robe (my mom) PJ pants for our niece and for DS. Ought to be fine finishing those up over the next couple days.

Sharon

Exquisite! But what are you doing with the chair from our bathroom???

We don't put up our tree until Christmas Eve and nor, normally, does the son we've just visited for an early Christmas (he goes to the other side of the world in a few days). When we arrived he was fuming and cursing because the lights wouldn't work properly and he couldn't get the right replacement bulbs. We said it didn't matter but we all ended up going to the local store for a new set of lights. They were put on the tree and the daughters did the rest of the decoration, it was beautiful.

But because of son's leaving his wife and daughters will be going to her mother's in Scotland at the weekend and the tree will come down.

What a disrupted festival this is turning out to be :-)

Mary

LOL!!! Thanks. That is actually my Great-Aunt Mary's chair. And it's very similar to the first one I learned to cane on. Dad did the seat on the one in the picture. It usually lives in the corner of the living room, but since the furniture all got rearranged for the tree, it moved to the corner of the dining room. You would not believe how many of those chairs there are! Dad canes for several refinishing shops and he does about 8 of them a year. They are everywhere! But such darling little chairs that it's easy to see why they are/were so popular.

Sorry your holiday is so scattered here and there. But at least you got to have a good day and visit with everyone. I'd leave the tree up if it were me. ;) They will come back at some point. Play your cards right and you won't have to be the one to take it down and store all the ornaments. lol

Sharon

We're related?

Spouse did ours. I hate discarding anything with any life in it and said that he should re-cane the seat. He did his usual groaning and how-do-you-expect-me-to-do-that act, took it into the garage and came back in an hour or so with it done - beautifully. It was his first too :-) But it's a little low for the table so I put it in the bathroom where lots of children have stood on it to reach the sink and it's great for putting, um, stuff on until it gets put away. There's quite a pile on it right now ...

Indeed.

Oh no, it's good, it stretches Christmas for far longer than the normal octave :-)

Yes, I suspect we'll be seeing the other son on Christmas Day. The daughters are in other countries so we shan't see them unless they make a surprise visit - it has been known.

Yebbut not until Christine and the girls have to get back to school for the new term. I suspect she'll stay with her mother in Scotland until she simply has to get back.

There will only be Christine. She'll want it out of the way then she'll spend the time son is absent watching the fils SHE wants to see and shopping with her daughters. Wouldn't suit me but she works hard so she deserves enjoyable time to herself. She loved the heirloom shawl I made and her younger daughter loved the tiny clothes I knitted for doll's house people.

Oops! Sorry - wrong ng :-(

Mary

Now there's a pretty thing! For that I could ALMOST start making dolly clothes again¬! ;)

Lovely work!

That is absolutely the loveliest one I've seen. If you made it, would you share the directions with me, please? I don't have one for our smaller tree, we had to downsize this year because of my inability to decorate the big tree we've had for so many years. DS bought a 5-ft and it is beautifully shaped, and don't need near all the ornaments. It looks very plain without the big angel we usually have, which is much too big. emily

Emily, Thank you so much!! Of course I will tell you how I did it. ;) The doll was just a little porcelain doll I found at the discount store. (like the blonde one in the box in the pictures.) I stripped her clothes off and cut them open on the seams. Instant pattern. ;) Then I removed her legs. (that part sounds gross but it had to be done or she wouldn't sit straight on the tree.) I used some buckram to make a cone to replace her legs. The top of the cone goes around her waist. I used hot glue and that seemed to work just fine. I didn't do any hard and fast measuring, I just made the cone wide enough to fit the average tree, and long enough that it "looked right." Her skirt is about 1" longer than the cone. And her skirt's width is roughly 2 times her waist measure. Maybe a little more than 2 times.

I did the bodice out of white satin, then the gold inset in the middle is just stitched over the top of the front bodice piece. The narrow lace covers the edge of the gold fabric so you can't tell it's just laid on there. ;) I used the sleeves from her original dress to draft my sleeves. However hers originally were gathered at the middle of her arm, and POOFY at the sleevehead. I wanted them to look softer and more flowing, so I eliminated the cuff that they were gathered to. Instead I did the double flounce with the two colors of gold. Those were just narrow strips that I folded in half wrong sides together, then gathered to fit the sleeve hem. They are about 1 1/2 times the width of the sleeve.

The skirt is 3 layers. I used her original skirt so I would know how wide to cut each piece. I cut the dark gold slightly longer than the light gold so it would peek out but look soft still. I thought that was just too much gold, made her look a little harsh with just the gold skirts. So I added the white over skirt. I did it as one piece sort of U shaped. Then I slashed the CB at the waist so I could get the skirt on her. ;)

Once I had the dress assembled, I put it on her and stitched the CB closed by hand.

Her pearls are that "string of pearl" stuff you can find in the craft aisle. It's all one piece. I didn't want it to move around. So I wrapped each strand around and then tacked it in place with a couple small stitches between two of the pearls. The stitches don't show because I used the same color thread as the pearls were strung on. Then I stitched around them at the back of her neck.

Her wings are 4 layers of sparkle netting. (wal-mart called it sparkle organza, but trust me, it's netting. lol) I drew out the wing shape I wanted on paper. Then I stacked the four layers of netting between two layers of water soluble stabilizer. I traced the wing shape onto the top layer of stabilizer and then satin stitched around it. I flipped it over and satin stitched on the wrong side. Then cut out the wings very closely to the stitching. (it was a small square of the stuff to begin with.) Once the stabilizer was washed off, I very carefully (with a cloth) pressed the wings to dry them. They stiffened up enough I didn't have to add any glue or stiffener. :) Then I carefully hand stitched them to the back of her dress. I did a sort of dart in the middle of the wings and that made them stand up even better.

Her sash and hair bow are both made out of gold bias binding. I had a package of that in my stash and it was the perfect width to use.

She was a lot of fun to do and my DMIL really liked her a lot. Between now and next Christmas I may do one for myself. Since all of us are brunettes and our angel is a blonde.... ;)

Let me know if any of that doesn't make sense or you have more questions.

Sharon

Here's where someone should provide that joke about why it's an angel atop the Christmas tree.

Nice story, Sharon!

--Karen D.

Haha!! GMTA!!!