Bit by bit, I finished all that needed to be finished for my family's holiday, despite a very late start. (I really began it all about four days beforehand!)

I had these pajamas in mind to make for my wee ones a couple of months beforehand. But at the very end, it looked fairly grim for actually getting to them. And yet, they were finished and laid out as the final advent gift on the morning of the 24th. I'm good, I know. (Insert maniacal laughter. Because that's what I felt like. A maniac.)

The trees are wool felt (probably from here originally, but I'm not sure because I have so much felt from all different sources!), a tree pattern that I drew, and embroidered with french knots. I really wanted the trees to have a really simple, "homespun" quality, so I made the stitches a bit uneven and cockeyed (OK, I know that sounds like an excuse made after the fact, but it was actually on purpose).

(Excuse the fuzz and dog hair; this was taken after Christmas.)

The pants are flannel, from JoAnn. A bonus with these nice, loose, mama-made flannel pajama pants is that they fit over James's cast, which was pretty fantastic.

And my children loved them, of course. The concensus was "cozy." Not so bad for a last-minute project. And the best gift of all to a tired mama.

{Oh, and by the way, thank you all so much for your sympathy about my finger! I agree with many of you in saying that I didn't really believe this to be possible, even though I knew my mom had done it many years before. What happened to me was that I was doing applique onto a t-shirt with a small zigzag stitch, and going around some fiddly curves. My finger slipped between the presser foot and the needle. Eeek!}

uncommon grace