Thanksgiving Crafting

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. We’ve established some fun traditions at our house and, being the giant dork that I am, I am always looking for new ones.

I recruited my sister for one of my most recent ‘projects’ and we made some fall leaves inspired by the Purl Bee. Not your traditional color palate for fall, but nobody is the boss of what color your fall leaves ought to be. We strayed from the recommended pattern a bit but not much.

This….

Is how Lexie and I craft. Smoked oysters, beer, wine, everything on the same counter so the tiny turkey can’t reach it.

The end result is fantastic, don’t worry, in spite of the bit of oyster juice on it.

I decided it was okay to use my “for special occasions wool felt” for this project. It doesn’t get much more special occasion than Thanksgiving after all. We spent the first night just cutting leaves out. We cut 40 total, two for each person’s coaster one small and the other a bit larger as you can see in the photo above. In case you’re wondering what beautiful knit treasure they are resting upon you’ll have to visit my knitting blog in about a week when I intend to have that project completed. We didn’t mind dragging this project out a bit. I think we started a month ago. It is normal to start a Thanksgiving craft a month before Thanksgiving right?

Ooh this one might actually give you a better view of our organized delicious mess.

I like to mention how long a craft takes to complete and although this seems simple there is a step that wasn’t quick. Cutting the veins for the leaves was pretty painless, although that is what I figured would be the torturous part. I’m making this sound super fun, aren’t I?

We just drew with pencil on each leaf top and cut along the lines for the veins. It was a pretty simple portion of the project.

The hard part was stitching around each of the veins and then of course along each edge. I’m pretty sure each leaf took right around 10-15 minutes once I got in the swing. It didn’t seem like it would be that complicated on a sewing machine but it was tedious.

It was Lexie’s brilliant idea to add a loop to each coaster so everyone can hang these beauties from their Christmas tree. Although, honestly, since the completion of my pile of leaves I don’t really feel like giving. I kind of want to keep the entire ensemble and hang them from my own tree. That isn’t the spirit we’re looking for though, I know. Oooh and before I forget I didn’t pin these at all while I was stitching them. That wool felt held together beautifully for me, just as if I’d ironed in some fusing.

See don’t you want your own set?

Wait until you what other crazy thing I decided to start for the 24 people coming to my house for Thanksgiving. I’ll give you a hint and a photo to ponder.