Kid Craft: Advent Calendar

It's time to start counting the days! This project is well suited to older kids - especially older kids who want to learn to use a sewing machine! Linda's complete post (more pictures) can be found on her blog, Natural Suburbia.

Today the girls and I decided to make a Christmas Advent calendar for our family that we will use this year and for many years to come.



It was a really fun activity and didn't take long at all. We decided to use pinking shears, they are quick and easy to use and the result is such a pretty edging, and of course no seams!



Materials:
Two different fabrics
Pinking Shears
Scissors
Yarn
Sewing machine
Ribbon
Pegs

For out bags, we used a 5 x 7 inch cardboard template.



I love this Christmas fabric, I bought it last year and used it as a centrepiece for our Christmas table. Today we just cut a thin slither off the one end to make our little advent bags.



Fold your material double, place the base of your template on the fabric fold and mark out your bag. That's Erin (above), marking our the hemp fabric. Cut out your bags with pinking shears, just around the top and sides.



Jen sewing straight up the sides of each bag on the right side of the fabric. The top the bags have been cut with the pinking shears too so no need for a seam there.



Here are all our little bags, sewn and ironed, 13 in Christmas fabric and 12 in plain hemp.



We hung a ribbon from one end of our fireplace to the other and wrapped the red yarn around the bags and tied them onto the hanging ribbon with a bow. We were going to add pegs but decided not to. We hung the bags alternating the Christmas fabric and the hemp.

Such a sweet project for mama and her girls... I still need to think about what treasures I will be adding to these little bags for Advent, any suggestions? I would love to hear your thoughts...
xo
Linda

Linda gives her four children the credit for inspiring her to create the wonderful Waldorf inspired knitted and wooden farm animals, gnomes and other toys that inhabit her Etsy shop. Knitting patterns for toys and finished treasures are all available from Mamma4earth.