Festival of small projects – Day 7

Good Wednesday morning!

Guess what? I changed the order of small projects I am posting for today…WHY? I had so much fun last night designing and making this new Santa Card Holder that I just had to share it with you all – TODAY! 🙂
It all started with doodling during coffee break..I was thinking how I could add some “presents” under that Christmas Tree card holder (project from Day 1) and then the doodle developed…and… Santa emerged!! 🙂
What do you think?
I just had to get into my sewing room and try it out, take pictures and share! Hence, this tutorial is a bit of a work-in-progress, photos might not be the best (besides that my camera seems to be failing slowly…maybe Santa will bring me a new one? 🙂  ) and I hope you forgive some of these technical details.

But let’s get to work!
For this Santa Cardholder you will need:
– 5″ x 7″ pieces of several holiday prints for the pockets
– 5″ x 7″ pieces of pockets lining (any fabric will do for this, it is not visible)
– 6″ x 8″ pieces of batting for pockets
– different ribbons to decorate pockets (for each pocket I used ~18″ of ribbon) and maybe some fun buttons, but you could also use strips of contrasting fabric instead
– 10 1/2″ square of red fabric (hat)
– 10 1/2″ x 6″ piece of tan/rosy fabric (Santa’s face) + scraps of black for eyes
–  TWO  10″x3″ (approximately) strips of white furry fabric or felt + 5″ circle of it for pompom (could be cotton balls?)
– 10 1/2″ x 55″ strip of white fabric (Santa beard that holds pockets) – this really depends on how long you want your card holder, it can be shorter or longer
– 11″ wide strip of batting that is slightly longer than the entire Santa cardholder

Making pockets:

– Cut your 5″ x7″ rectangles from different holiday prints with pinking rotary blade (this is optional of course, you can cut with regular blade too, I just thought that looks better and skips the need for any kind of finishing)
– Cut one 5″ piece of ribbon and one 7″ piece of ribbon and on the wrong side run a bead of glue and glue the ribbons in place (you can stitch them later if you wish)

– I thought that exposing a bit of batting on the edges of the pockets will be fun, so to do that, I cut pieces of batting slightly larger than pockets (6″x8″), placed the pocket fabric on top and then used my ruler to trim the batting to be just about 1/4″ larger (place first 1/4″ line of the ruler to the edge of fabric – see photo on the left)

– you can use a little of basting spray adhesive to secure the fabric to the batting or pin it in place for now

– Turn the pocket right side down and place the lining on top of the batting as shown – again, I used some basting spray adhesive to secure it in place

– to decorate my pocket aka package, I folded a piece of the same ribbon to look like a little bow, tacked it with few stitches and sewn on a decorative button and then added it to the top of the “package”! Of course here is where you can let your creativity fly and do lots of fun things!

– once all three layers are together and ribbons in place, you can stitch around the edge (~1/4″ inside the fabric) to hold all three layers or maybe quilt it a little? This completes your cardholder pockets (aka packages)

Making Santa’s face:

– take the 10 1/2″ square of red fabric, fold it in half, WRONG sides together and on one side make a 45 degree cut (to make a hat triangle). To do this – simply place a 45 degree line of your ruler on the fold of the fabric and cut along the ruler (see top photo) – voila! you have a Santa’s hat!

– to add face – take the ran/rosy fabric rectangle (10 1/2 x 6″), fold it along the width and on one side draw a gentle curve like show on the photo (left)
– cut along the drawn line, open the rectangle and place it on top of the red fabric so that bottom edges align – this is your Santa face!

– make it alive by adding two 1″ circles of black for eyes and maybe some eyebrows? 🙂 These can also be buttons or Yo-Yos…
Trim Santa’s hat with a strip of white furry fleece, white felt or even some cotton balls. Once we add the long beard and batting in the back, you can add the pompom and mustache from the same “furry” stuff!
To complete the long Santa card holder:

– on one end of the long white piece of fabric make a pointy end just like you did with red fabric (cut away on the 45 degree line) – I did all this cutting with the pinking blade, but that is your choice!
– join the long white piece to Santa’s face by stitching the flat short side of the white strip to the bottom of the face
– place the lightly larger piece of batting underneath (again, I cut my batting piece with pinking blade) and secure it to the top -I used the basting spray adhesive (you can use basting pins or whatever you like)
– on the photo on the right you can see how I placed my pockets to audition the placement, colors etc. HOWEVER – I would quilt Santa’s beard FIRST and then  stitch the pockets on it!
– also now is the time to stitch on the pompom on the top of the hat (and also add a piece of ribbon in the back of it for hanging!) and mustache right above the beard (I just gathered the strip of furry fleece in the middle and cut the ends a bit pointy and it looks like mustache!)

Well my creative friends – this is how far I with this last night! But it is pretty much all there in terms of the tutorial. I need to finish quilting the beard and then permanently stitch the pockets on and it will be ready! Hmmm…as I look at these photos – maybe a piece of green fleece as a backing to the whole thing, again just slightly larger (to show a bit) and cut with pinking blade? Or to just leave it as it is? My son suggested this morning to add a thin strip of that furry fleece all the way around – what do you think? Let me know!

 

Happy Wednesday to all,
Marija