The Last Christmas Post

Christmas ended yesterday, so I'd better write about the last of my Christmas crafts. While browsing for ornament ideas and other crafts, I came across the Long Thread, which had a handy-dandy compilation of holiday crafts. Several were made from felted wool sweaters, and the Long Thread's thrifted tree ornaments and Alphamom's (shame about the name) thrifted sweater ornaments caught my eye. So I made my own:

These were made from a favorite green sweater I finally had to felt because of too many moth holes (a felting process that took forever, because I have a front-loading washing machine). I used only 12 circles for the tree, rather than the called-for 15, because my sweater was a little thicker. I also free-hand cut the circles because I was too lazy to print up the templates; I have several not-so-round circles in the scraps. A cheap "silver-plated" plastic bead tops it off. The wreath I embellished with vintage red pressed glass beads to look like little berries. It kind of reminds me of the wreath cookies my mom made, which were cornflakes and green food coloring stirred into melted marshmallows, formed into wreathes, and dotted with red hots. Mmm . . . artificially colored candy cookie products . . .

I also finished another square for the Advent Calendar -- Snow:
I fused blue fabric to the wool square, made a few snowflakes from clear seed beads, and attached them and plastic snowflake doodads to the square. Since I'd like to have this calendar complete by next Christmas, I'll be working on this throughout the year (especially since I finished 2009's year-long Christmas craft, to be shown later).