Advent calendar

Last year I created an advent calendar for my children. It was made up using small amounts of Christmas fabric with simple patch pockets on a larger background. This was my way of giving the kids whatever treats I wanted to over advent. I was brought up in a household that wasn't allowed chocolate advent calendars so we always had ones with pictures. This has been passed on to my kids by my parents and they love it. It keeps Christmas about the magic rather than over-eating and consumerism. In this vein I wanted to make the calender as colourful and Christmas-like as possible.

[caption id="attachment_125" align="aligncenter" width="343" class=" "] The first advent calender[/caption]

I was new to sewing so kept the first one simple using only patch pockets rather than anything more complex, making sure there was an extra special, larger pocket for Christmas eve. My brother-in-law saw it and asked for one for his daughter and my sister followed suit so this year I made more. I became a little more adventurous with some forward planning this time.

At a craft show I found some lovely strips of Christmas fabric (quite cheap) that had little squares of pictures. Perfect for the job in hand. I had a lot of red fabric and some larger Christmas fabric, so set to work. The strips of squares made it simple... theoretically, having to merely sew along the right line and suddenly pockets would appear. I decided to neaten it up by making them into box pleats to form more flexible pockets. This was a learning curve. I had never done box pleats before and after much consultation with my sewing books and my mum (who made my wedding dress- just to give you an idea of her sewing skills) I understood the technical side. A little trial and error followed and I realised it wasn't so much how you sew box pleats but how you iron them. Much pressing later and the pockets were ready to sew on.

[caption id="attachment_124" align="aligncenter" width="425" class=" "] Close up of pockets[/caption]

The backing was made with a busy Christmas fabric attached to a plain red for the front (to accentuate the pockets) with some vilene ironed between and these closed up leaving space for a turn of fabric at the top to form the loop, which a hanging thread can be passed through (I put a piece of dowel through the top of mine to keep it flat). After much measuring, lining up and finally sewing on the pockets I discovered my next challenge: the numbers.

For my kids I'd used some fabric of the 12 days of Christmas so the numbers were already attached. For the others I'd cheated and written the numbers on in fabric pen. I was never happy with the result and planned to improve it in the future. My friend Kath Bee from dreamingofacraftroom came up with the solution. She has a Cricut machine which used computer software to place the numbers onto a special iron-on plastic and cuts them out. Kath offered to cut the numbers out that I needed, then I simply needed to iron them on. This was the perfect solution.

I soon discovered that with all the ironing box pleats required it was much easier to iron them on at the end, otherwise I would hit them with the iron and they would melt. Luckily I learnt this very quickly.

In the end I made three advent calendars this year and they've all been gratefully received. As for Merida and Finn they still love the advent calendar from last year. This year it has a mixture of chocolates (yes, I caved) and crochet goodies to either decorate their room or hang on the tree. These are in a Christmas theme of course, beings stars and snowflakes. I'm pleased to say that the crochet snowflake got a much bigger reaction than any of the chocolates so far. I hope they like the crocheted Christmas trees for Christmas eve but shhhhhhh, don't tell them.

[caption id="attachment_123" align="aligncenter" width="460" class=" "] The finished products[/caption]