Crafts for adults

Winter Swans and pine cone gingerbread

Winter Swan and Wreath embroidery

One of my Christmas presents was the Winter Craftpod subscription box. This is my favourite subscription box, containing three lovely craft projects. I love a crafty project (or two!) to get my through the Christmas holidays so this was definitely the perfect present for me. The Winter Craftpod box was inspired by the graceful beauty of swans.

Winter Swans and pine cone gingerbread

The box contained two hand sewing projects and a recipe card. There was a trio of felt swans to stitch, an embroidery hoop featuring a swan and a recipe for Pine Cone gingerbread biscuits. Can you guess which project I started first?

Yes, I made the gingerbread biscuits. I actually cheated a little and used a block of Ikea gingerbread dough. This is my favourite dough and I wish I had bought more than the two blocks I did. It’s so quick and easy to use that I was able to make the gingerbread biscuits as soon as I had cut out a pine cone template.

Pine Cone gingerbread biscuits

I love to work with felt so started the trio of swans next. The three soft sculpture felt swans were tricky. Let’s be honest! They were small and detailed.

soft sculpture felt swans

However they were a real joy to put together and were a lovely project whilst watching Christmas films. I embroidered something different on the wings of each swan.


soft sculpture swans

The final project was the Winter Swan and Wreath embroidery designed by Gordy Wright. The original design was translated into an embroidery pattern which was printed onto fabric. The project was stitched in a 6″ hoop using 5 DMC embroidery threads and a metallic gold Anchor embroidery thread.

For some reason I set this aside and only picked it up last week. I’m not sure what initially put me off as I usually enjoy stitching a pre-printed panel. The instructions were easy to follow and I loved watching the embroidery progress.

Gordy Wright embroidery hoop

The swan was surrounded by a wreath with pine needles and berries. I also loved the addition of the felt pine cones, I’ve never mixed materials like this before but I really like the effect. The swan was finished off with a little gold crown.

I’ve asked for the Spring Craftpod for my birthday and am really looking forward to seeing what’s inside. When I was tidying up my sewing supplies I found some incomplete projects from previous boxes (yes, Summer Craftpod 2020!) which I need to complete.

Previous boxes can be found here:

Winter Craftpod 2019

Spring Craftpod 2020

Autumn Craftpod 2020

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