…my true love gave to me: a skulk of foxes for the tree.
For the past nine years (counting this one), a Christmas ornament swap has been hosted on Craftster. Charmingly dubbed a Sweat Shoppe swap, it functions like a cross between those holiday cookie exchanges and a chain letter: you sign up for either three or six partners, make three or six like ornaments to send off, and receive ornaments from either three or six different people. Because you’re not crafting something specifically for someone, many participants made their ornaments well in advance and wait for sign-ups to begin.
I had been tempted by it in the past, but never had anything made ahead of time and never had time to start anything once sign-ups began. This year, some magical wave of forethought seized me, and I started my sewing early. When sign-ups hit, I was ready. I had found this pattern by Maisie Moo on Etsy, and gave it the old college try to make sure it would turn out, be an appropriate size, etc.
I named him Les, and he has a home on my Christmas tree. 🙂 I’m glad I practiced on him, because it gave me a chance to tweak the instructions a bit. Rather than cut out teeny, tiny black eyes from felt, I traced them onto the white pieces and embroidered them using raised satin stitch. I also used finer stitches than the instructional photos showed. And…I’m not sure how the scarf, at the length prescribed by the pattern, was supposed to wrap around his throat and have a tail to fringe – so I made it about 1 1/2 times as long so that I had a little room to play with.
Because I have apparently learned my limits after many, many years of Craftmas (official and unofficial), I signed up for three partners and not six, tempting though that was. These little guys were so much fun to stitch up!
I named them Redd, Michael J., and Renard – just think about that for a sec – and all three have made it to their new homes, despite the best efforts of the postal service to waylay them.
And now that they’re finished, and I should be thinking about the zillion other things I need to get done before Christmas, I can’t help but think what sort of ornaments to offer next year…
EDIT: By popular request, here’s what I got in return.
A fabric tree from Alberta. (Front and back.)
A cozy cardinal birdhouse from Massachusetts.
A shaker ornament from Pennsylvania – the tree was up by the time the postal system finally decided to get it to me, so it got photographed in its natural habitat. 😉
Thanks for looking! 🙂
The Witty Child 