It is only a matter of some days until the arrival of the Little Dude's birthday. He often asks me when exactly it will be, as he has a five year old's hazy grasp of the passage of time, so I decided to make him something to help him keep it all straight. A birthday countdown calendar! (Sorry that this picture is so 'soft'. I didn't realize it was not very good until it was too late to take another, as now it is dark)
Along the bottom are two rows of little pockets, numbered from highest to lowest.
And the top part has a cake and a birthday banner.
So you take a little candle out of a pocket at the bottom...
...and then you stick it onto one of the little velcro dots along the edge of the cake.
And that way the number on the pockets tells you how many more days there are till your birthday. Easy peasy! And every morning we add another candle to the cake. Its all very exciting.
This was a fun project to make. I got the pattern from the book Countdown Calendars. I don't often sew things from patterns in books, but it was pretty easy to do. I wished the instructions were a little more picture heavy and a little less wordy, but still. Choosing the fabrics was the best part, and I was very pleased with how the stamping onto fabric worked out. That's a technique I'll use again. My only criticisms of the pattern are that if I made it again I would make a hanging sleeve across the back, instead of that loop at the top. Or maybe two loops in the corners instead, as the central one does not work very well. It holds it up well enough, but the corners flop down. I had to put a couple of tape loops on the back to hold them up. Also, it tells you to use adhesive backed velcro dots on the little candles and along the edge of the cake, so I did. But I find that with repeated handling by eager little fingers (the Little Guy loves it too) they are prone to come off. I thought about reinforcing them a bit with the sewing machine, but after a quick google search about stitching through adhesive, I decided against it. I did one small test and it gummed the crap out of my needle, and didn't even work. So if I were to make this again, I would use velcro dots with no adhesive and just sew them on there.
Anyhow, I would recommend the book to anyone. It has lot of patterns for advent calendars, which I love so much. I surprises me that I have not made one yet. Perhaps this will finally be the year.
That reminds me that I should get cracking on my partially finished felt advent calendar. I started last year but never finished.
Posted by: Charlotte | 06/19/2014 at 10:50 PM