It's A Softie Christmas

Peek-a-boo! It's a Christmas Basket full of softies! And it’s getting crowded!

Each year my aunts hustle and bustle, cut and glue, snip and stretch tables full of items to stock a little log house on a Christmas tree cutting farm. The farm is owned by a family which has been a long time friend to ours. Each year we trample through the snowy rows of trees (if we are lucky), searching for the very very best Christmas tree ever. After you’ve tagged your tree you can warm up in the cabin with some hot chocolate… and… there just happens to be cute things for sale!

I was inspired by the softies that Allsorts creates, so I tried to do some little versions myself. I came up with a modified Penguin and Puppy, Squirrels, Owls, and Acorn Elves. You can see the elves above, hiding in a forest of my Grandfather's carved wooden pine trees.

I used a variety of felt fabric, with the exception of the Owls who had cotton material. Each squirrel has a hand-picked sparkly acorn; the Owls are sporting felt holy bunches; and the Elves have small unique items.

The Owls started as a patch-work quilt-like project. Each little blue-ish white square was cut out and then sewed together. I attached a felt backing and added more stitching across the pattern.

I cut the front of the owl pattern out and then sewed the rest of the felt body together on by hand. The eyes and nose are from remnants pieces. The holly bunch just made them more festive!

I tried experimenting with different stitch patterns on the penguins, each more tedious than the last. I finally settled on just plain birds with the same cute little nose that the owls have.

A couple ‘special’ squirrels have embroidered holiday icons (Christmas tree, holy bunch) but this too got quickly intensive and was given up. Since I was trying to punch out a variety of different options I didn’t want to spend too much time on something that may not go over well. We’ll see how they sell!

Merry-pre-Christmas from the basket of animals!