Seasonal Greetings Fibristas and Fibristos! The kindly St MrXStitchoclaus has invited regular contibutors to share stitchy gifts given at the wonderful time of the year.

My son lives 300k away from me, and of course, as any mother does, I miss him desperately, especially at this season. Earlier this year, he was gently chiding me about my art, saying he only got to see it online.

As a child, he had enthusiastically tried techniques with me while I was in college working on a 2 year Textile Arts program. He learned to embroider, he screenprinted and dyed with me, I teased myself with the idea of turning in *his* firstweaving as *my* final project as it was so much better than mine! I didn’t – instead he took part in a show on the island where we lived at the time, with his weaving and a small embroidered piece.

I decided this then was for him the minute I finished it. He shares my fascination with science and the arts, so this piece is perfect. Coupled with some accuracy, all the connotations hearts have, and the fact that it’s my work,  it makes it a perfect “gift from the heart” for him from his “tiny old mother”. A little burning, a bit of beading, Kantha running stitch and backstitch on hand dyed fabric, set into a shadow box:

Merry Christmas to my darling, handsome, talented, brilliant son J!

And to all of you: I wish you  sharp needles, strong threads, rainbows of fabric and floss in the new year. May your designs be splendiferous, your work heart felt and your art horizons expand beyond your wildest dreams.

———-

Arlee Barr is a Canadian artist, working primarily with textiles. She describes herself as “curious, eccentric and just a little opinionated“. Surrealist in thought, Fauvist at heart, Arlee likes the eclectic, explorative and absurd. Sprinkled around the interwebs, she can be found hanging around her fantastic blog.

Over here at Mr X Stitch, we’re quite old skool in our Christmas philosophy.

We like the simple beauty of spending quality time with loved ones and gratefully reflecting on all the joy that has happened in the year.

With that in mind, we’re keeping it kinda simple this Christmas and not doing any giveaways or making a big fuss.

In fact, we’re even taking some time off over the festive season and may even – gasp! – not do any major facebooking or twittering either! Our last post of 2009 will be on the 26th December and then we’ll be back with a bang on the 4th January! We’ll miss you as much as you’ll miss us – we hope!

In the mean time, however, we’ve asked some members of the Mr X Stitch family to do a few words about Christmas love.

Beefranck started the ball rolling with her tirade of love in her Emporium post, and there will be more to come.

Because we love you guys, and we’re really grateful for the chance to share the wonders of the world of stitch with you.

So from all of us at Mr X Stitch we wish you all a very merry festive season and all the best for 2010!

Stephanie Hall, aka MultiTaskingMama, dropped me a line to tell me about her fantastic 12 Days of Christmas event.

Every day between now and Christmas she will be giving away a free downloadable embroidery pattern! You’d be a fool to miss it!

The crew over at Urban Threads are celebrating the festive season with a groovy giveaway!

All you have to do is email them and tell them what rebel craftiness you’ve been up to this year. There’s loads of things to win as well – check it out!

• $100 gift certificate for any Urban Threads designs
• Urban Threads hoodie
• Coal (soap, that is)
• Some rockin’ fabric
• Sweet little Gingher stork scissors
• Festive embroidery floss and a hoop
• Decadent hot chocolate
• Your very own furry fanged bunny

Pretty cool! So jump to it! And if you win, come back and tell us all about it!

We love Miso Funky. We love them in ways that should only really be expressed in our NSFW posts. So when they told us about their new emo-broidery kits, we knew we’d love them too.

And because the Miso Funky people like to go all the way the extra mile for you, they’ve compiled a handy list of Miso Funky Xmas gifts for the whole family. Go that’s sorted! Go buy some!

Our good buddies over at Urban Threads have released a festive pattern free to download from their site, and I’m pleased to report it’s not at all schmaltzy!

The design is free until Friday, 11th December in machine embroidery, hand embroidery, and digital stock art formats.

Enjoy this little early Christmas present from Urban Threads!

Ah Christmas. The merciless onslaught of advertising begins and nearly every advert on the telly is about Christmas these days. The thing that makes me laugh the most is that since mid-November the adverts are all “enjoy Christmas, by buying lots of presents for the family and having happy times” but then at some point the adverts for the sales start and when you actually look at it, the sales start at 4am on Boxing Day in some stores so you’re actually given 28 hours to enjoy Christmas. It’s so horrible.

Alissa and I are doing mostly home made gifts this year, in an effort to condense the love down a bit. People buy lots of gifts because they want to show lots of love. We’re taking the time to make things, which I think shows a lot of love in a small space. We had the same philosophy at our wedding where, for the evening reception, we asked guests to bring a dish of food with them. People put lots of effort in and the buffet was excellent and brimming with love.

I posted about our wedding here and here in case you missed it.

Now I can’t reveal too much, lest my family are actually reading this post, but we are making lots of biscuits and cakes for friends as nice Xmassy treats. I found a great recipe for making cinder toffee at Instructables and we had a go at the weekend. It works really well, although I’ve thrown the stuff out to stop me eating it all. But dipped in chocolate, it’s a winning formula!

A couple of years ago I found the great poster at the top of the page online at buynothingchristmas.org and each year I like to go and stick it up around the town to get people thinking. It’s not about how much you buy. It’s about what you do for people and how much love and goodwill is spread around.

You can download the poster here. Print some out and stick them up!

And then go and make some stuff for people instead of buying it!