Polegate Stitch Ups Christmas

Festive stitching has begun! I don't actually have that many Christmas workshops lined up for this year; there is another hoop one for Made & Making in November, and a NEW Christmas card one being organised at Juicy Lemons in December but I think that's it. I've also only got one Christmas craft fair to stock up for at Victoria Pavilion Arts, no other event has appealed to me and I find for the really small local ones I used to do - it's more effort than it's worth. Perhaps next year I'll feel more confident in booking some of the bigger Christmas craft events again. 

But, last week I was invited back to the Polegate Stitch Ups for some Christmas decoration making. I was only last there in October so it was nice to come back and see how the ladies had got on with their last hoop. Several were guiltily admitting that they hadn't really touched it since the workshop, but one lady had almost finished hers and brought it in to share with me! Photos of that at the bottom of this blog post. 

We were making our decorations in 10cm/4" hoops as they are quite a nice size to go on a tree, especially a bigger one with sturdy branches. I had good fun putting together the kit packs and playing around with different colour combinations. I had thought I had more dark blue/blue themed fabrics but I couldn't find them when putting the packs together so not sure what happened to those. Mainly these were grey/green or green/red so quite traditional which didn't seem to be a problem. 

The joy of these hoops is that you don't have to make them into a landscape or anything specific, you just get colours that you like and you add lots of sparkly trimmings and threads over them so that they catch the lights on the Christmas tree. 

There weren't that many ladies there at the end of the workshop to photograph as several left early and it sounded like a coach load of them had all come down with something a few days before so it ended up being a smaller group anyway, but the hoops I have managed to photograph below are so pretty!

I'm sure any tree would be proud to have one of these hanging on its branches! I have since been sent a photo of a finished Christmas hoop from one of the ladies who left at lunchtime too - the photo quality isn't great but you can still see how pretty it is. I love the little wreath at the top and the snowy scene at the bottom with those frosty trees. 

And the lady who had nearly finished her landscape hoop from the previous workshop, I feel like her name was Sue but I'm not 100% sure (sorry if you aren't a Sue, Sue), let me photograph her beautiful piece to show you all. It's such a wonderful, evocative piece with those deep colours. It looks like such a rugged, wintry beach scene with lots of rocks and crashing waves. You could almost say that same fabrics represent crashing waves or jagged rocks - it can be whatever you want it to be!

There were a few more bits she wanted to do more on by the sounds of things, and an element she wanted to take out and try again but I just think it's so lovely already! The colours work so beautifully together and there's a lot of fabulous texture. Eee so exciting to see finished (almost finished) pieces!