My Favourite St. Nick

My Santa is done. Between getting the garden cleaned up and fall/winter veggies planted and other assorted household doings, my next Santa is done. I think this is my favourite one yet. It must be the old world look and his brilliant red coat, but whatever it is…..he is definitely my fav.

A few details. The instructions were lacking in places and too much time was spent on trying to understand what was expected, so rather than dwell on that I just went along and did what I know to do and the end result is virtually the same.

I added a shirt pocket to the coat (not part of the pattern) to hold Nicks pocket watch. I embroidered a tree branch on it like what is done on the bottom of the coat. The pocket watch I made using things from Steampunk stash and fortunately it came together beautifully. I had a small pocket watch, but the perspective was wrong, too small.

The sack is supposed to have a flap, but I couldn’t make sense of it because once you add your embellishments to the sack there is no place for the flap to actually sit properly, so I left that off. In the sack, I put some snowshoes and an assortment of greens. In the bottom of the sack I added some zinc weights. By the time I added the tree in front, he was starting to lean a bit, and the zinc brought him back. Another reason I never do the complete finishes such as securing the sack until I’m sure it’s all together and working right.

I used flannel for the cuffs top and bottom, the hood trim and the scarf. For the scarf I doubled the fabric rather than use felt. The fringe is the same for lampshades, I used two colours, blue and red to pick up those from the flannel. The tree is decked out in little gift boxes and a red cardinal. My sweet Radar saw that bird on my worktable and gently put his teeth over it, until I gave the “no” command. Not happy that I took that joy from him…;o)

The embroidery on his coat did not call for beads, but I added some delicas to give a bit of sparkle. This Santa stands approx. 26” tall. So all three Santa’s for my customer are 18”, 22” and 26”. I think that will make a great display for him.

I so love this Santa. His face is done as mostly a pancake style, the only dimension to it, is his nose. The details are created with pencils, other than a white gel pen for the whites and sparkle of the eyes. The whiskers are mohair locks from a local fibre artist. I think the glasses make him so much fun, they give him such a big expressive face.

Now off to make the stockings. Back soon, enjoy.