Christmas Angel

Phew! Christmas is done! What a fun, exciting holiday, but I have to say the day after was the most enjoyably relaxing for me. Waking up and thinking that there was nothing that I "had" to do was a pretty good feeling. With all these kids, the holidays start about 3 weeks before Halloween and don't stop until now. I love it, don't get me wrong. There were so many things I wanted to do, but just didn't get to. Maybe next year, or some other year. You don't have to do every holiday "tradition" every year, some traditions will have to be rotated.
I didn't make a lot of Christmas presents this year, but I knocked myself out on the few that I did make. For my parents I made this angel. Dolls are so much fun. When I started getting close to finishing her I realized that I would have to put her in the mail and send her away. How sad! She might get cold, or worse, lost! So I prolonged my stay with her for as long as possible by making her a little doll quilt to keep her warm. All the material I used for her I had on hand from other projects.

I used white linen for her dress that was left over from a dress I made for the girls this last summer. I did a quick little embroidery around the hem with a herringbone stitch and some french knots. It looked so pretty that I wanted to keep doing more embroidery on the dress, but sometimes less is more. The buttons are actually beads sewn down to conceal snaps.


I considered some different face ideas, but I decided to go with an embroidered face like I used on these dolls. Those dolls have become such familiar part of our everyday life, that I thought it would be nice for my mom and dad to have a doll so similar. The hair is done with yarn sewn down to the head. I must say, I think I do a really good job with hair. I don't know how other people do it, so I've figured out a way on my own and it looks great. If anyone is interested I could do a step by step explanation sometime. Let me know.


The wings were made from silk left over from a Halloween costume. I have made wings so many times, but I always spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do them. For these, I wanted them to have a feathery look, but real feathers weren't right. I used some funky, furry, feathery-like yarn and crocheted a long strip. I made a sandwich that went silk-feather strip-silk-batting. I sewed them together, leaving a small opening, and then turned batting to the inside. Again, less is more, and I decided to not try and quilt feather patterns on the wings.

The quilt is made from more of the white linen and some vintage fabric that might be feedsack, but I'm not sure. I embroidered a small heart in each white square to quilt it. It looks super cute all together with the doll. Sort of Christmasy, but hopefully not so much that she can't be enjoyed at other times of the year.

I worked on another Christmas gift all month, but it is still not done. A quilt for Jim. It still needs to be quilted. I need to go in and clean up the living room with all it's wrapping paper, boxes and presents everywhere and turn the room back into my sewing room.