Door Wreath

Holiday Craft: Snowman Toy

Bring this Christmas character to life with red felt, batting and bells

By Pamela Acuff

Show your best friend some puppy love with a jaunty jingle-bell collar and cool snowman toy filled with batting and a squeaker. Seam two strips of red felt together and stitch jingle bells all around to make the Velcro-close collar. Use white felt or white felted wool sweater material to make the toy. (To felt a sweater, wash it once or twice in hot water to shrink and bond the wool fibers, then machine-dry.)

Skill Level: Beginner

Materials: Tracing paper; pencil; pins; Magic Cabin felt: white, yellow, orange; scissors; matching and black threads; zigzag sewing machine; fiberfill stuffing; small squeaker.

Pattern: Snowman Toy Template

Directions:

1. Enlarge snowman toy pattern.

2. Cut toy pattern twice from white felt. Cut two 4x1/4-inch strips from yellow felt for scarf. Cut 1/2-inch-long narrow triangle from orange felt for nose.

3. Arrange and pin scarf strips on front of toy, crisscrossing them under chin area. Sew close to all edges of scarf.

4. Pin nose on head; stitch in same manner.

5. To make eyes, mouth and buttons, sew a zigzag stitch in one spot with black thread (or use button-attaching stitch, if your machine has one).

6. Pin front to back, with wrong sides facing and raw edges even. Stitch close to edges, leaving 3-inch opening on one side.

7. Wrap squeaker in fiberfill, then place in toy; stuff rest of toy firmly. Finish sewing edges.

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Door Wreath for Christmas -- (Can also wrap christmas foil around wreaths)

To make a good first impression on your holiday-season visitors, try hanging up one of these autumnal or wintry decorations. Besides being warm and inviting, they’re also simple, fast and inexpensive to create. Click through for the instructions for each one.

Gorgeous Holiday Door Decorations

Dress up your main entrance with one of these easy DIY adornments

By Woman's Day Staff

Winter Wonderland

Paper snowflakes help fill out the form.

TIME 20 MIN COST $32

Materials

Blue ombré yarn ($2.50; Joann.com)

Foam wreath form

Snowflake paper punch

Light blue, dark blue, silver and white scrapbook paper

Hot-glue gun and glue sticks

Flathead pins

2 blue ball ornaments

3 iridescent snowflake ornaments

Ornament hook (optional)

Directions

1 Tie the loose end of a skein of yarn around the wreath form, knotting it at the back.

2 Neatly wrap the yarn around the form, pushing the yarn together every few inches to cover any exposed parts of the wreath form. Continue until entire form is covered, then tie off at the back. Trim the excess.

3 Punch 3 to 5 paper snowflakes in each color of paper. Hot-glue the center of each one to the top of a flathead pin; let set.

4 Hot-glue ornaments to pins; let set.

5 Pin the ornaments to the wreath, adjusting them as desired. Once they're in place, add the paper snowflakes.

6 Hang the wreath over an existing hook or knob. Optional: Push an ornament hook into the top back of the wreath, then hang from a nail or adhesive hook.

http://www.womansday.com/home/holiday-decorating-ideas/holiday-door-decorations-4#slide-3

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TABLEWARE STOCKING (FOR SILVERWARE)

You’ve seen these before in catalogs/magazines, right? I made these little utensil stockings for a church dinner last week and adore how they turned out! They are so festive! I can’t wait to use them for our family dinners in the future, and have Sadie and Charlotte roll their eyes about “mom’s fork stockings”.

You’ll need:

fabric for stocking body (a fat quarter is plenty for a couple of stockings.)

fabric for stocking cuff

ric rac or other trim if desired

click here to download my free pattern!

sewing stuff (matching thread, sewing machine, scissors, pinking shears are helpful, etc)

First, cut out two pieces of the main fabric with your stocking body pattern, cut them wrong sides together. Cut two pieces for your stocking cuffs. I used some plain white muslin I had lying around.

Also for the ric rac, cut two pieces 3.75 inches long.

Fold your stocking cuffs in half where the line indicates on the pattern. (now would be a good time to iron them,

Pin the raw edges to the right sides of your stocking pieces and…

Sew, with 1/4 inch seam. (same seam allowance throughout the tutorial)

Press with your iron.

Pin your ric rac in place on the seam line.

Using coordinating thread, sew it down. ( I didn’t bother changing the bobbin, just the top thread color to red)

Now, with right sides together, pin… …and sew around the stocking, back stitching at the beginning and end.

Trim around the edges with the pinking shears, or if you don’t have those, a zig zag stitch would work as well!

Turn right side out and you’ve got yourself a cute lil’ stocking!

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