Taking on Life: Advent Away!

Recently I jumped on board an advent calendar sew-along from Homemade by Jill. Her sewing and ideas are amazing. The blog on this was written a few years ago, but it is still followable...she added new steps each week to follow along with.

I am a very beginner sewer in the eyes of a quilter, but to me I have just enough skills to accomplish a task like this. Hopefully, I will get better in the process! This project has been so fun so far and I cannot wait to delve into this hobby more fully.

Here is a picture of where I am to date...

My advent pinned down

It is all pinned down...not sewn down yet and the idea of the shape of the tree came from Katie's So Happy. blog, with my own color choices...

Tree from So Happy. blog

Her tree is so beautiful and I could not help myself but to copy it.

First... I went down to the craft store (doesn't matter which, but I used Hobby Lobby for most things and they had felt on sale 4 for $1.00) I obviously had an idea of what I wanted because I was going off of someone elses idea, but it took a while so make sure that when you go you do not have an appointment in fifteen minutes and end up rushing your decisions.

IMPORTANT: You can do any colors you want! That is the coolest thing about this project is that the color choice is yours alone....let those creative juices flow!

What you need to get started...

I purchased the individual sheets (yes buy the whole sheet...about the size of a piece of paper, the squares that they sell precut are not worth it) of Classic Rainbow Felt for all the boxes and the tree portion.
For the backing I purchased a yard of cream felt for about $5.00 which is plenty big! I am planning on doing a backing layer to hide all the stitches and am still rolling around the idea of putting batting inside it to give it more weight...but that is further down the road
I used heavy duty multi-use embroidery thread for everything on this project. Again, whatever colors you want.

Sizes

My backing is 20" wide by 30" tall....but in hindsight I would have made it a bit bigger. This is also up to you
My pockets are modeled after Jill's at 2.5"x2.5"
The tree is modeled after Katie's at about 17"x17", but again, again, again it is your choice. I wish that my backing had been a little bigger to support a bigger tree, but que cera cera. Hopefully it holds 24 ornaments.

AFTER....you have bought your supplies and cut your felt....you will need to embroider the numbers. I used a light marker to write the number on each felt square.

IMPORTANT: I laid everything out after I cut it to decide color placement of the squares which was an integral part of making it pretty to the eye. Then you can write your numbers.

Laying out the felt squares to decide placement before writing numbers on them

Embroidering the numbers takes time, but it is rewarding. I used a standard stem stitch which handles turns and curves well. I used this video to learn how to do the stitch as I was not aware of how to do it before starting this project.