Advent Banner

If I was going to put the effort into making an Advent Calendar, I wanted it to really do the job. A friend had wanted to make an advent wreath and bought all the felt, but didn't have time to do it. So I inherited the materials (THANK YOU!) and set to work -er- set to thinking about it.

I've never liked the numbers on top of the scene of a Advent calendar, but I love the idea. So I thought I'd make a calendar where we insert a leaf for each day we count down. I cut TONS of leaves. I made a leaf template that was 3"x2" and cut and cut and cut (that took a whole year).

The next year, I cut the candles for the wreath and sewed on leaves and candles. I used pins to put the leaves and candles where I wanted on the purple felt and shoved it through the sewing machine. I'm not very good with the sewing machine and some of the leaves didn't lay flat. I decided that it made it look cool that way rather than messy (and I wasn't about to tear it all out.) Then I put it away 'till the next year.

In 2009, I decided I wanted to celebrate special saint days in Advent...it turns out there are lots of saint days in Advent. So I plugged saints into their dates and then plugged personal saints for our family (the names of our kids, our favorites, etc.)

I found clipart online and added a textbox that stated the saint name and date Dec 6, etc. I used Iron On Printer Paper and then ironed the
picture onto a white fabric. I cut out

pictures and text boxes (which were
now backwards -- I didn't want to wait another year to figure out the new version of Publisher how to make the words backwards so they ironed-on forwards). I glued the text to the back of the leaf and the picture to the front of the leaf. I used adhesive backed velcro dots to affix the leaves to the banner.

Using silver and gold fabric paint we wrote the themes for the weeks of Advent on each candle. (The silver didn't look good on the lilac.)

I was THRILLED to find a tight tule in pink, orange and yellow to make the flames. I folded them until I was happy that it looked flame-like and sewed it into that shape at the bottom. Then I used the velocro dots.

Dave bought me a banner hanger (the black wrought-iron picture below) for $15 at Lowe's. I was thrilled with the price.

I sewed a casing in the top of the purple fabric so it would hang where I wanted on the fireplace.

• felt in purple (backing)
• felt in lavendar (3 candles)
• felt in pink (1 candle - Gaudette Sunday)
• Felt in green (leaves)
• green thread
• purple thread
• fabric for the flames
• adhesive backed velcro dots
• Iron On Printer Paper
• elmers glue

I meant to do an iron-on of the O Antiphons, but I didn't get that far this year. I did print off a booklet I made with each O Antiphon and reflections -- maybe next year I'll add them to the banner...