What's Better Than Santa??

More Santas! These Santa-Boyz are now completed and are joining the first Santa I made, shown here. The three of them have traveled around the house, posing in various spots to find just the right place to hang out. The two new Santas began on the dining table, probably in hopes of a snack.

Then they found their buddy and hung out in front of the Yule Logs quilt and holiday pillow. You can't see it well in the photo, but the gold-trimmed Santa is a bit of a leaner. He may need his stuffing rearranged a little before I call him done. I love Old World Santas, and this pattern is quite simple, requiring just basic sewing skills. The pattern link is in the eariler post. Our daughter Joanna is visiting Florida for a few days from New York, and has claimed the green Santa to take home with her. So he got finished just in time to travel north. They're all under the tree right now.

There are a few more Santas like this short gold one around the house, too, helping to make it festive for the season. Joanna and I visited Epcot at Disney World when I picked her up in Orlando. The trees and decorations there also helped put us in the Christmas spirit! The tree below was a small one at our Coronado Springs hotel. It was lovely with those pink poinsettias around the bottom.

He's the Man...

This Old World Santa was great fun to make. It just took me several years to get him done! The project went in stages. Every year Santa would surface at the top of the "in progress" pile, get a little more done, and then get put away for another year. Well, this is Santa's year! Not only is this one done, but two more are following close behind.

If the fabric print doesn't give away the age of this project, the price sticker on the pattern envelope will. I apparently bought it back in the day when patterns were $4.50. Those days are long gone. And the copyright date is 1988, so you can see I've had it for awhile. It's a pattern called "St. Nicholas Doll" by Country Appliques. Designer Jan Kornfeind has lots of Christmas patterns, and this one is still available. Well, 1988 aside, Santa is pretty timeless don't you think?


Santa was fun to embellish, and I went fishing around for all sorts of trims. I found that teeny, tiny tree that's hanging from his bell rope. It's old, too. But on the back was a teeny, tiny price tag that said $5.75. Yeah... I don't think so. I never would have paid that much for a teeny, tiny tree. It must have been part of a grab bag. And beyond all that, Santa seems to love the camera, and he begged to be photographed in a variety of settings! Since I often make a project with no clear idea what I'll do with it once it's done, I just tried out different settings and aimed the camera to see where he looks best. Here he is beneath the tree on "Yule Logs", a small Log Cabin Variation made using both wide and and narrow fabric strips. One of my favorite parts of Christmas is to be able to decorate with all of the quilts and home accents I've made over the years. They don't get out much. I'll show some more of them over the coming weeks.



All this posing really tired Jesse out. He got a haircut for the holidays, and collapsed by the Christmas tree.