Do you love Jennifer Paganelli's
SisBoom blog and fabric? I do! And now, thanks to my lovely friend Jenny, of Sew Pretty Dresses, I get to participate in
The Twelve Days of Jennifer Blog Tour! For twelve days, some of us crafters/bloggers who also love Jennifer's crafts and fabrics are going to use her as inspiration for holiday sewing and crafting.
First up, my JP connection. I "met" Jennifer through Jenny. Jenny and I have been blogger buddies for a few years now, back from when I had my old blog, Too Many Hannas (because my girls had too many Hanna Andersson dresses). I started the Facebook sewing group, Handmade Dress Haven, and Jenny joined up and, at some point, added Jennifer and, at some point, she and I also became Facebook friends. I have run the Facebook group for about four years now and I cannot remember exactly when this all happened, but, suffice to say, once you are friends with Jennifer, she becomes one of your cheerleaders and you cannot help but do the same with her. She is just THAT sweet and THAT inspirational.
So, for the last two months, I haven oohing and aahing at Jennifer's Facebook feed, full of lovely holiday craft items, mostly for sale at craft fairs near where she lives in Connecticut. Since I literally live on the other side of the country, I have been only ogling them until the last two weeks. I finally decided to do something inspired by her and now, with this blog tour, I get to share. I made three things, all inspired by Jennifer.
My big project is this little quilt! Isn't it sweet! I do not quilt, so this little quilt was a big deal for me. As I was scrolling through the Sis Boom Blog, I found
this post, from 2012. It totally inspired me to want to do something like a quilt. I googled and googled and googled until I found this cute,
free, quilt pattern.
And here is the result:
I chose this project because when I was a small child, my family lived in Panama for a few years. One of the items we brought back with us is a wall hanging of a woven christmas tree. The bright colors always made me happy and I wanted to make a christmas tree wall hanging for my family.
First step, I cut and arranged all the little squares and triangles and rectangles.
The colors and patterns look so pretty together! They are not all from the same JP fabric collection, but they still look great side-by-side.
I am not a quilter and do not have a walking foot but I think I did pretty good sewing it all together. The lines are almost all straight!!
I like how the bottom turned out, with it looking like a tree trunk.
The extra fabric I used, from Joann's, is shimmery!
It's like the tree is in a shimmery, fairy forest.
The other projects I did are here. I have a lot of Natasha, in green, from Crazy Love, and I decided it would be lovely as ornaments.
For this little wreath, I cut one inch long strips of Natasha and wound them around a small floral wreath. Tip: Put the glue on the wreath, not the fabric, and then gently pull on the fabric as you wind it around. That will make the fabric fit snug against the wreath and you won't have gaps. I would ric rac around it and added this little fabric strip "poinsettia" at the top. It's cute, huh?
I did something similar with this foam ball. I had planned to put a lot of sequins all over it but those dang things take a long time to push into the foam so I settled with four sequins in each section.
Shimmery! Festive! Fun! Just like Sis Boom!!
Please join the rest of the tour to see how others use Jennifer's inspiration for holiday sewing and crafting.
