Advent Calendar

It's done! Finally! It really wasn't that difficult it was just a matter of me making some stinkin' decisions. Jon had an advent calendar when he was growing up and he had fond memories of pulling the little felt ornaments out at random. He had favorites and what he liked about it (besides the little treats) was not knowing which ornament he was going to get to add to the felt tree. So I was trying to duplicate this fun experience for our family.

I already had the beige cloth, I think it's canvas, and headed to my favorite store, JoAnn's! The moment I walked in the door I found some super cute fabric that had Christmas trees on it. It didn't scream old lady or gaudy, and it wasn't too little kiddy-ish. I bought the rest of my materials and headed home.

You can see what my plan was from the pictures. The only thing I didn't really have figured out was the pocket. I still wasn't quite sure if the ornaments would be numbered as so many calendars are, or if they would be Christmas images. I wanted this to focus us back on the reason for Christmas so the idea of "getting something" was out of play. We already did enough to focus on presents we didn't need one more thing.

The Ornaments
I had found a list of scriptures detailing the birth of Jesus so I wrote each of those verses on the back of a little wooden circle. The wooden circle, as you can see, became the ornaments. I then covered each circle with a beige piece of paper using Mod Podge. Using my Cricut machine I cut Christmas images out on glittery cardstock and Mod Podged those onto the circles. I had several issues with this because I had used Glossy Mod Podge and it looked kind of cheesy, I then tried Mod Podge with the matte finish and it looked much better. I almost scrapped the whole ornament idea over this so I'm glad I got them to a point where I was happy with them. I then hot glued some silver cord on the backs to hang them.



The Calendar
This is where I'm not so good with details. I just cut what I think looks good instead of doing a bunch of measuring and planning beforehand. For the blue fabric (Angel), and the three trees I only bought a 1/2 yard of fabric. It was barely enough so the pattern on the fabric would turn out right. I first cut 2 pieces (front and back) of canvas to the desired size and then realized for the biggest tree I only had about one size I could cut it, so the base was 21" and the sides came to 20". I then just cut the red tree's measurements almost in half and finally the light green tree, was about 3" less than the red. I made sure they all fit on the canvas before moving on. I used Heat-n-Bond on the back of the Christmas trees. Again, I didn't follow directions with the trees when using the Heat-n-Bond because I didn't know the measurements ahead of time and didn't want to waste fabric. This doesn't make a difference except in the cleanliness of your iron and ironing board. I then cut a 6"x12" rectangle of the blue fabric and put Heat-n-Bond on the back of that as well as a 6"x12" rectangle of red fabric, which I already had. These were used on my Cricut machine to cut out the angel, the star, and the "joy". I then ironed each item onto the canvas.



Finishing Touches
I laid out the ornaments on the big tree to make sure they'd all fit (I actually did this before decorating them.) I then placed buttons right above them and used a white fabric pencil to mark their spot. I sewed the buttons on their marks, using my sewing machine. I decided to make a pocket and have the ornaments drawn at random, even though the verses were in a particular order, I figured the kids would know the story well enough eventually. As I was about to make a pocket out of the beige canvas I realized I had a pair of Jon's old corduroy's sitting in my pile of fabric. I made sure the ornaments all fit and then cut the back pocket off. I placed it where I wanted it on my canvas and sewed it on. I then sewed the front and back canvas together with right sides facing each other on just three sides. After turning the canvas right-side out, I cut some batting to fit inside and placed it inside. I'm pretty sure normal sewers recommend sewing the batting to the fabric but I've done that before and it's not really fun to work with so I just inserted it after the fact. I top-stitched the top and cut off some excess fabric and batting. I used a dowel rod at the top to hang the calendar. After stitching the top closed I put the dowel rod down and folded the top seam back and pinned it. I then removed the dowel rod and top-stitched where the pins were. I tied some twine on the ends of the dowel rod after inserting it back into the calendar and Voila! It is finished.

I really went back and forth a lot on how to make this and what to do with the ornaments so I'm glad it's finally done and I'm proud of how it turned out.