Many, many years ago, my sister, mother and I sat down and embroidered an advent calendar for my grandmother. While talking about Christmas and advent calendars she mentioned that she had never had an advent calendar. My grandmother’s birthday was on November 30th so we thought it would be fun to make her an advent calendar that year and it was a huge success. For years she would give us her advent calendar a week before her birthday and we would fill it for her.
When she died the advent calendar disappeared into a cupboard and none of us really thought about it. That is, until my mother got it out and gave it to me for Little Miss Bossy-Boots. The calendar had definitely seen better days and most of the little bags were falling apart.
Therefore I decided last year to take all the bags apart and sew new ones.
I also used some woven vilene to stabilise the embroideries. Some of the bags we made were hardly big enough for more than a praline so I’ve tried to make these a little bigger. The easiest way was to sew a ‘frame’ around the embroidery and for this I bought a lovely red and white stripe that reminds me of candy canes. The back of the bags is a green cotton from my LQS.
I’m so happy that this advent calendar is in use again. I haven’t quite finished all the bags so I’m sewing like mad to keep up with finishing and filling them. This calendar will hopefully be in use for another twenty-something years now that it’s all fixed again and all the work is definitely worth it, I think.
