Make a fabric pouch advent calendar - Homemade Christmas

Fabric pouch advent calendar - Make a fabric pouch advent calendar - Advent calendars to make - Craft - allaboutyou.com

Our children are no longer satisfied with opening a cardboard door to reveal a Christmas scene. Instead, they love to be greeted by a chocolate or small toy every morning in December. You can make each pouch large enough to hold gifts for the whole family or just for one child. Set in a frame or string the pockets on ribbon and hang along a mantelpiece.

You will need
● Fabrics in four patterns
● Iron
● Sewing machine
● Scissors
● Picture frame (optional)
● Ribbon
● Red fabric pen or number stamps and
● Fabric paint
● Needle and thread, or fabric glue
● Pins
● Knitting needle
● Drawing pins (optional)

1 To make 8cm x 12cm bags like those above, cut your four fabrics into strips about 28cm wide and 60cm in length.

2 Turn in and iron a 1.5cm hem on the long sides. Sew in place with running stitch. This will become the channel for your ribbon.

3 Divide each strip into six 10cm-wide pieces with a hem on each side, and fold them in half, wrong sides together, into 24 pouches.

4 Arrange the pouches as you would like them to appear on the finished calendar.

5 Print or draw numbers, from one to 24, onto each pouch. If the materials are too dark, glue or sew smaller squares of a lighter fabric first for a clearer background.

6 Turn the bags right sides together and pin in place. Sew below the ribbon line down the sides of each pouch, removing the pins as you go. Turn the right way out.

7 Trim any excess fabric to neaten the opening of each pocket and iron flat.

8 Cut ribbon to fit the back of your frame or mantlepiece, and push it through the back of the pouches with a knitting needle.

9 Fix the pouches inside the frame with drawing pins, or hang them up, then fill with chocolates, biscuits or little presents.

Photographs: Alun Callender. Styling: Ben Kendrick