Christmas in July

I spent a little time this hot, 90+ degree afternoon poking out the designs in old vintage Christmas stencils.  I remember spray painting stencils for holiday cards when I was in kindergarten, maybe a little later.  It was fascinating to lay my chosen stencil - a sleigh with snowflakes around it - on light blue construction paper, and then spray paint it with silver.  A few minutes later, I lifted the stencil off, and Voila!  there was my own holiday card front!  I think I wrote a poem or holiday greeting on a piece of paper which was then glued to another matching piece of construction paper and the two were stapled together.

I'm hoping that I can do the spraying of stencils again very soon, as soon as it cools off enough for me to set up a spray painting area outside.  And as soon as the threatened storms pass over, and the backyard is dry enough to use.

Maybe this will take awhile.

I've also been working on a Christmas tablecloth.  I'm stumped just now because I have to choose between having the cloth fit the table just so, or having the cloth drape over unevenly.   This hesitation is because I worked so hard on making the panels fit together, that I am not ready to cut off the one or two inches I ought to, so it will fit right to the edge of the table.

It has been a difficult, though fun, sewing project.  The fun part was in the buying of about 30 different Christmas fabrics and then laying them out  to compare, and then choosing the ones that flowed together.  I tried to get a variety of prints.  I ended up with five from the same designer, but only used three in the final version.  I never found a fabric with the manger scene on it.

The hard part was sewing them together to the center oval.  I usually get these ideas and work without a pattern, so I never know for sure how the project will turn out.  No pattern makes it hard to get it to fit together properly, but I do love a puzzle.  Once it is finished I will post a picture of it.  I'm not very good at keeping track of my pictures online.  That's why I have so few posts with pics.  Maybe a change would be good in the future...