Advent Calendar {Re-Post}

Last year I joined Jill in a sew along to make an awesome advent calendar.  It was a ton of work and I barely finished in time but I've been so happy to have it this year.  Every day I pull a chair up to the calendar (I didn't want it within little hands) and Catie climbs up and hangs an ornament; it was the perfect year to start the tradition.  Also, everyday as she pulls out a new ornament I'm impressed with how great they look and I'm glad I took the time to hand sew them all.

I thought I'd re-post my advent so you can take a look, sorry if you've seen it before.

December 1st and my Advent Calendar is finished!  When I started this sew along with Jill I didn't realize just what I was getting myself into, every singe stitch on this calendar is sewn by hand making everything take significantly longer than I had anticipated.  Every time I pulled out a different project my calendar loomed over me.  I'm glad to say that it's finished, I love it and I'm now free to work on other projects.

As a quick recap, week 1  we cut out and embroidered all of our numbers and sewed them onto the backing piece.  Week two we cut and sewed the tree on and made 8 ornaments.  Week three we made 8 more ornaments and then sewed all of our buttons onto the tree.  This last week we finished the calendar which involved finishing up the last 8 ornaments, sewing a backing piece on the calendar to hide all those stitches and adding a hanger.  You're supposed to slip a wooden dowel into the holder on top but I haven't bothered to pick one up so it may be finished but there's now way to hang it.  Oops.

Here it is with the ornaments hung.

And with them all tucked in their pockets.

Here's a close up of the ornaments.

And one more close up of the finished calendar.

Jill has a Flickr group where people can link up their Calendars so if you want to see more you can go here.