Christmas Countdown Calendar

I have been very busy working on my first Christmas project for the year - an advent/countdown calendar =D I'm so so pleased with how it turned out. It's definitely not perfect and there's lots of things I could have done better, but I'm pleased because it's without a doubt the most time consuming thing I've ever attempted and I managed to stick with it without getting bored and giving up. I was too impatient to wait to get my sewing machine off my sister so the entire thing is handstitched. I'd say I spent around 6-8 hours on it in total, spread over 3 nights.



The little pockets are made out of felt and are blanket-stitched around the edges. The measuring, cutting and blanket stitching took up the majority of the 6-8 hours!



E for Ella. There's also a J for Jayden but you can't see it in this picture. Each of the pockets has a little embellishment on it except one in every row, which I'm going to put numbers on



As you can see, there's one pocket missing lol. I ran out of embroidery thread halfway through blanket stitching the edges so I'll have to get some more thread before I can finish it. The background piece is unbleached calico which is nice and thick and it's doubled for extra strength. The border around the edge is made from scraps of Christmas printed fabric leftover from a Christmas dress that my mum made for Ella a few years ago. The scraps were really small so I had to cut them into strips and then join them all together, then I made it into binding and stitched it to the edges. If I had been patient and waited for the sewing machine it would have taken me 5 minutes maximum to do the binding but I'm not a patient person so instead I sat there for over an hour handstitching it!

All I need to do now is get some more green thread to finish off the missing pocket, stitch the numbers onto the blank pockets (which I probably should have done BEFORE attaching them to the calico) and then find a way to re-enforce the top of it so I can hang it up somewhere without it folding itself in half. Oh yes, and I need to buy something to put in the pockets =p I was going to do the traditional chocolates, but over here the temperature gets mighty high in December and they'll no doubt melt so I'm thinking a small wrapped lolly or something.

I'm also really pleased because I managed to do the whole thing using materials that I already had and didn't have to buy anything for it (except green thread which I'll need to get). For most of it I ended up having EXACTLY enough for what I needed.