Woods Angel

 There is an angel in the woods who helps people find the proper Christmas tree and even bring them some decorations...

You're never alone

 In between I finished this small piece I began a while ago.

Step 7

I now post the almost finished Santa so that you see the way you can work on it. Take it as a surface you can embellish and use all techniques you know that can be suitable for the piece.

Don't forget to upload pictures to the Pinterest folder!

Pictures of the participants!

 These are the wonderful contributions to the Challenge: 

From Marjon Verhoeven:

From Marjan Wolfs:

From Oliva Garcia:

From Sarah Meek:

Step 6

 This is the progress of my piece. After this I will show my piece already finished because I couldn't stop and there was a moment where I had to stop. So now I'm going to do a second Santa to try other techniques and decorations...

 

I think the pictures are self explanatory. There is a huge surface left that needs to be worked on. You can use overlapped pieces of fabric. You can embroider them, sew buttons, beads, etc on them. Be creative. Everything is right. This is YOUR piece.

HAVE FUN!!!!

Step 5

 Thank you for all the answers to my call. I am happy to see that you are following this challenge and either do it already or plan to do it after you finish your Christmas gifts!

I would like to explain that the Santa body you are making now is going to be almost completely covered by appliqué and embroidery so don't worry if it still doesn't look quite ok for you!! :-)

I will be showing today the finished body - well, quite finished - so that you prepare for the fun of embellishing it with other fabrics and threads.

You should prepare some matching fabrics and threads in the colours you want to use. I will be doing a woods Santa so that my choice is one of natural dyed and printed fabrics. You can use whatever you like most. Christmas fabrics, some collection of fabrics you haven't used yet that is laying in some cupboard...  whatever. Try to use different kinds of fabrics, cheesecloth, tulle, gaze, cotton, sheers, etc. As for the embellishments you surely have loads of them.

Now to the Santa I'm making:

I put some fabrics on top of the Santa to see how they look like. I'm only looking at it at this point.

I think I will use some branches as arms when the moment comes...

I like to skew the face so that it doesn't look too straight.

The fabric I put under the face can work as a hat. I'm doing this:

First I fixed the fabric that is going to show under the face and be the hat. I fixed it with running stitches and small backstitches every 1cm/ 1/2"

After that I appliqué the face.

I pinched the fabric with my fingers till I got it right, the way I wanted it to be. From the front and from the back.

Now I'm happy with the way it looks.

I fixed it with some appliqué stitches.

Finished!

Now you can begin with the embellishment of the Santa!

I must say that it's a wonderful surface to work on. It is very forgiving and easy to stitch.

I won't be doing a neat appliqué with turned edges (you are of course free to do if you like it, it depends on the way you want it to look at the end! I will be happy to see different outcomes) because mine is a rustic type of Santa.

It matches the woods where I walked this morning:

I would like to show you some Santas done in the group so that you can see the wonderful possibilities!:

  

This wonderful Santa was done by Sarah Meek. It's a great beginning!

This is also a great face from Oliva Garcia.

From Marjan Wolfs a wonderful interpretation on fabric!

From 

Marjon Verhoeven with a big moustache!:

Please try to send them directly to Pinterest. I sent you an invite. You just have to accept it. 

Log into Pinterest and you  can upload your Santa in the Santa folder!

Step 4

 

First close the two pieces of felt with running stitches.

Close the top of the head, you should aim for a curved top:

Close it with winding stitches:

Now you should have something like this:

I only put the face on top so that you get an idea. I will sew it later.

Sew the upper part of the body to the lower one, also with running stitches.

Fill it with fleece or with wool roving. Now you will have a surface to appiqué and embroider on!

I haven't got any feedback about anybody following this challenge. Did you write to the address lechner.sara@gmail.com sending me your email address?

Because the challenge is a lot of work for me, if you are not interested there is no point on me showing you the progress of my Santa. I will post the finished Santa when I finish it.

I thought it would be a good idea for the lock down...

Step 3

 So happy to see back here all the ones who replied to me! I will see to open a Pinterest folder so that you can see what everybody is doing. Please send me your emails to my email on the Contact link of the blog and you will get an invite which you have to respond to. If you don‘t know how to do it please send me the photos of the development of your Santa an I will post them for you!

Now Step 3:

Felters:

Take two pieces of cheese cloth of a size suitable for your face. You can see approximately the size on the photos. It is better to do cut the pieces somehow bigger because they shrink a little when they are felted. We will cut them and sew them together. One bottom side and one lateral side should have little wool on them so that you see the cheesecloth edges because this can look lovely. You see this too on the second photo where I put the face on top. 

Because the felted body is going to show between the appliqué pieces you may already use a coloured cheesecloth and wool for this step! It‘s your choice. My choice is a nature in winter type.

My two cheesecloth pieces are already felted. I put some wool roving on each side of the cheesecoth, not too much, just a thin layer, because we are going to do embroidery and appliqué on the surface of the whole Santa. Then I felted the two surfaces. You can do this with the embellisher too if you have one. We are going to fill the Santa with fleece or wool after sewing the pieces together in Step 4.

Fabric:

Take four pieces of cotton fabric in a natural colour. It can be other than beige because we are going to cover it with printed pieces of appliqué and embroidery.

To give some body to the Santa you should work as if you were doing a quilt sandwich, that means that you put a layer of batting between two layers of fabric. After that you baste the 3 layers with small backstitches every 2cm. See photo.

Who wants to participate in a challenge for Christmas in the Covid Age?

 A stay at home challenge!

The idea is to make a Santa doll using the techniques you like the most. I will use felting (machine or wet), appliqué and embroidery. I you would like to use fabric as a base you can also do it.

I won't get too much into explaining exactly how to work because I would like it to be a creative more artistic kind of thing where nothing is right or wrong. You just must be pleased with the techniques you use and have fun all along!

I will divide the explanation in steps and provide some hints of how to use eitherfelt or fabric for the outcome.

Material:

wool roving, some contrasting colour of knitting wool, darker roving, embroidery threads, matching fabric, whatever you find in your stash!

Or fabric, natural colour for the face, any other colors for the body

Step 1:

Felters:

Felt a surface in an appropiate size for the face:

I did it longer because I cut it in two pieces to have this result, so you should do it about 8 cm x 16 cm or 2 1/2 x 5"

because the pieces will be sewn together where the line is:

For the ones who work with fabric:

Just cut a piece of fabric following the form of my face or the form you like. You will appliqué this face to the background so that you should reinforce it with a second layer of fabric to be able to stitch on it. You don't need to cut it along the line I mentioned because you will just embroider the beard on it.

Step 2:

Felters:

For piece 1 I felted some green wool with the embellisher (or with a felting needle) from the background to have green eyes, rosy cheaks and a brown moustache.

Here you see it from the back:

On piece 2 I needle felted some strangs of knitting wool in a suitable colour to do the beard.

I put piece 2 under piece 1 and needle felted them together.

I embroidered the eyes and did some stitching with a sewing thread to pull the brows, the nose and the moustache out fo the surface, stitching like this and pulling the thread after each stitch to get the desired 3D surface:

I sew two little felted ears and embroidered them. I also did some running stitches for the mouth.

Fabric:

You just embroider the features on your background. Be creative, you can use some threads for the beard and brows, etc...

Bye for now, I will be sending Part 2 soon! It should be a kind of mystery challenge!!

I also hope that many of you participate so the we have some fun and see many interpretations of the doll!!

It will be a surface to embroider and appliqué on!!!

Have fun!!!

Answering a question:

Please write in the comments if you participate!