Thanksgiving Pumpkin Table Candles

I love all the little ornament pumpkins in the grocery stores right before Thanksgiving. These are Thanksgiving table candles are pretty and easy to make.

You'll need:
Small striped pumpkins - find ones that sit fairly flat
4 tapers
Melted wax - use old candles!
3/4" drill bit
Exacto knife
Strong glue - like wood glue
Pretty ribbon - 17" or more for each taper

First, take off the pumpkin stems. A pair of pliers work great to snap them off. 

Put your old wax in a canning jar or use almost used up candles in jars. Fill a pan with water and place the jar in the pan. Boil until the wax is melted. Amazing, the top of the jar was not hot so you can pour easily!

Meanwhile, drill a hole through the top of each pumpkin. Once you get through the hard top, stop drilling!  Brush off the dust.

Use your knife to open the hole a little more at the top if the taper doesn't fit properly. You want it be be very snug, but you don't want to break your candle trying to twist it in.

Pour wax into each candle hole, until you are 1/4" from the top. Use a cotton swab to wax the very top or roll the pumpkin a bit to cover any flesh at the top.

Allow the wax to slightly dry. Squeeze glue around the taper bottom and gently, but firmly twist the candle into the hole. Use a cotton swab to brush glue around the base of the candle on the outside.

Ribbon:
I used about 17" of ribbon. I like to make easy ribbons. Gather the ribbon into a loop.

Make a loop, the same size on the other side, hold with your thumb.

The next two loops will be a little smaller, make each side the same size. Continue decreasing in size until the ribbon is used up. Place a straight pin through the middle.

Stick the pin with ribbon, in between the candle and the base. Gently spread the loops, and pin again, once you have a nice loopy look. Repeat on the other side if you want.

That's it! I have my candles drying nicely for Thanksgiving on my shelf over my table. Place smaller votives in between the larger tapers. These only took about an hour, plenty of time to make before this Thursday! Pretty!

On The 9th Day of Christmas...

Good morning everyone!   

As always, before we give you the post for the day, the winner of yesterday's Joyous Home Journal is ~ Krista!  Congratulations! 

Email us at ripe4harvest@msn.com so we can get the Christmas Journal to you!

Fleecy Tea Time Ornaments 

 I love making ornaments out of fleece... they have such a fuzzy, homey look to them.  Not to mention how simple they are to make and they always come out so pretty!  This is a good ornament for your girls who are beginners with embroidery.  You can embellish the ornaments with very basic embroidery stitches or just cut out the shapes and then blanket stitch two layers together all around the edges.
 

I chose to do a very simple Poinsettia flower design with Lazy Daisies and Colonial Knots.  I'm not sure how close I came to a Poinsettia flower, but you can call them Christmas Flowers if you like!  

First, you need a shape for the teapot template.  You can use a variety of things for this.  If you are artistic, you can draw one, but other options include:  Tracing a tea pot shape from a book, a free one from the internet, a free coloring page on the internet, and cookie cutters are wonderful for ornament shapes!  

Let's start with cutting out the fabric.  You do not need a lot of fleece for these!  You need two layers for each ornament.

1.  Trace your template design on plain white copy paper and cut out.  Pin the template on to your fleece (another wonderful thing about fleece is it looks the same on both sides!) and cut it out with a small, sharp pair of scissors.  I have found that our embroidery scissors are wonderful for cutting these out! 

To cut out both layers so they are identical, lay the first fleece cut out on top of another layer of  fleece,  pin and then cut it out. 

Ready for embroidery!  

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You only need to embroider one side of the ornament, but there is no rule saying that you can't do both sides if you like.  I used a size 5 embroidery needle and DMC embroidery floss.  Thread your needle with two strands of the thread and knot the end. 


As I said before, I used a basic Lazy Daisy stitch and the Colonial Knot.  Let's start with the Colonial Knot!  

This is the best knot you could ever learn how to do.  The first time I did this knot was the last time I ever even thought about using a French Knot.  French Knots can be difficult to get right and are quick to come undone; this is very simple and comes out just about perfect every time!  Practice on scrap fabric though before you begin on your ornament if you need to.

 1.  Come up from the back of the fabric to the front.  Wrap the thread around the needle as shown:  From the left over the needle to the right and then underneath the needle back to the left again.  

2.  Now from the left again, wrap the thread over the needle to the right and hold it there.  

3.  Insert the needle close to where you came up and begin pulling the thread snug to the needle.

4.  Keep pulling until snug to the needle, but not so tight you can't pull the needle through.

5.  Pull the needle all the way through and watch the loop close down snugly to form your knot!

Finished!

I covered the whole top of my ornament with knots, but you can do as many or as few as you like!

 

Now on to the flowers with the Lazy Daisy!  This is usually one of the first embroidery stitches you will learn if you are a beginner and I'm sure a lot of you already know how to do this one.  

1.  Come up from the back of the fleece to the front.  Insert the needle again close to where you came up and run the needle under the fabric and bring back up a short distance from where you inserted it (however long you want the stitch, or in this case, petal to be).  Loop the thread around the needle as shown.

Pull through until a loop is formed, but don't pull too tight.  Insert the needle at the front of the loop and pull through. 

Bring the needle back up near the center of the flower and repeat the steps to from another petal.

Stitch five petals and finish the flower with 3-4 Colonial Knots in the center.

Stitch three flowers, or more if you like!  

With green thread, come up close to each flower and use the Lazy Daisy stitch to add leaves all around the flowers.

Tie off all of the your threads neatly in the back.  Now, put the two fleece layers together.  You are ready to Blanket stitch them together!

1.  Thread and knot the needle the as you did before.  Bring the needle up at the edge between the two layers (this will hide the knot).
 

2.  Insert the needle to the right of where you brought it up as about 1/4" away from the edge and the thread looped around the needle as shown.

3.  Pull through until snug but not too tight.

Insert the needle again to the right of the previous stitch and repeat all the way around the ornament.

 When you run out of thread, just take the needle down between the layers, but not all the way through.  This will keep your knots hidden and not hanging out on the back.  Start again the same way you first began.  Go all the way around and don't forget to stitch the inside of the handle.   

To thread the top of the ornament with ribbon, you need a size 18 or 20 Chenille needle.  Thread the needle with a few inches of silk ribbon (or a sheer Organza) ribbon and run it through the top of the ornament and pull through.  Tie the ribbon into a bow, and hang on your tree!  Quite lovely...

Have a blessed Friday! 

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Joyous Home Journal Giveaway Details!

 For the remaining posts of this event, everyday we are going to be giving away the Christmas 2011 Joyous Home Journal!  On the last day we will have an extra gift to give along with the journal!

We are keeping the daily giveaway as simple as possible. To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment to that day's blog post and say that you want to be entered in the giveaway - one comment equals one entry. You can earn one additional entry by posting about the daily 12 Days of Christmas blog post on your blog, Facebook (add us, Theresa Powers or Jessica Munday, as friends on Facebook for verification) or twitter. Each day we will draw a winner and announce the winner the following day before the next daily post!

Making a Placket

Plackets confused me terribly. I finally got it and now can make a placket for any garment. My ex. When you use buttons down the back of a dress, a nice little placket is stitched where the skirt top meets under the buttons. Shirt cuffs are another example. Where you button the cuff is where your placket is.

1. This is the back of a dress skirt, not yet attached to the bodice, you do that after. I cut an opening of desired length; 3 in" is usually big enough for my girls. The skirt is inside out. Open the placket cut flat as shown.

2. The width of my plackets are 2", measure the length of the placket and cut a matching strip from your dress fabric.

3. Turn the skirt over on top of the placket, so right sides of the skirt and right sides of the placket can be pinned in place.

4. Take to the sewing machine and with matching dress thread, sew a seam allowance that will be able to catch the middle cut and secure it. Make sure your dress is laying FLAT and the cut will almost be even with the raw edge.

5. Flip over and iron up, make a hem on the strip, and turn over to meet the inside sewing line. I don't give the hem measurement because it may not meet the line you have sewn, that will depend on the seam allowance. Adjust the hem to fit the line. I found it much easier to make my own measurements for my needs, instead of following a pattern guide : )!

Do you see how it is pinned? I keep my left hand under the skirt to grab pins and top stitch this neatly with a matching cotton thread. It comes out much straighter than if I was sewing from the inside.














6. Your placket is finished! Wasn't that simple? We attached the bodice here, and all that we need to do is hem under the lining and slip stitch, then add our pretty pearl buttons.