Crafting Christmas Gifts: 25 Adorable Projects Featuring Angels, Snowmen, Reindeer and Other Yuletide Favourites

This is a beautiful Christmas craft book to look at. The photos are big and clear and festive with that scandanavian style. The instructions for craft projects/gifts are simple. There's quite a few sewing projects although some are very similar (the santa's and angels are much the same with different decoration/dressing) and also some painted crafts (like decorating wooden boxes and garlands) based on the style of Tone's sewn characters.The patterns are straightforward although what I found very annoying is they are slightly wider than A4. You will need to copy the patterns rather than cut from the book because cleverly they overlap to save space (colour co-ordinated for each item). If you want to photocopy (as recommended in the book) or scan and print this is irritatingly tricky as the patterns are just a couple of cms wider than A4.As a novice I did struggle with some of the pattern because the instructions are so simple. I couldn't find out if I needed to leave a seam allowance on every part of the patterns because of the way it was worded so had to make a guess. Also I found my stitching didn't leave as smooth a join and my seams were a little bulky in places which although my problem the book doesn't have any tips about these particular things. For instance I found stitching the collar onto the dress really quite tricky and wasn't sure what to do with all that extra seam allowance which never gets tidied away. You could dismiss this as my skill being the problem or the book not covering all the aspects depending on your point of view.Also Tone recommends using stiff fabric or using interfacing to stiffen lighter fabrics but I found this very difficult to work with for the clothes (I was handsewing) and they don't seem to sit well on the doll. Maybe I misread or maybe the instructions were too is general and I misunderstood.Also worth considering that the fabrics she uses in the book (which are gorgeous) are not cheap to buy for yourself. I shopped aroung for cheap but stiff fabrics on ebay and it ended up costing quite a lot once I got all the colours for people and reindeers and clothing. Better if you're not a total novice and have material already I suspect. But the quality of the material is going to greatly influence the look of your own softies.Not sure how many of the items in the book I would want to give as gifts as they are mainly decorative things - but perfect for me to expand on my own Christmassy themed decorations around the home.So a mixed review for me. I still love to flick through the book and she certainly gives you easy to read instructions about how to make everthing in the book. But I found as a beginner some of a bit frustrating once I was trying to make something. Could be user error of course. I think if you're already quite crafty and you like the Scandanavian style this would be a good book for you.You can also find forums and groups on Flickr dedicated to the Tilda books and crafts who seem to be a lovely bunch. I recommend using the Look Inside feature on Amazon as this will give you a really good feel for the sewing projects it contains and you can decide for yourself if it's what you're after.

My wife and I decided to purchase this book a couple of months before Christmas. We had just invested in our first sewing machine and thought that this book might give us some ideas for decorative hand-made things to have about our house at Christmas time. Now as a man who has not sewn anything for near on 25 years, (apart from a pillow case I had to make at age 11 - part of my compulsory schooling in New Zealand!) nor actually touched a sewing machine in those years, I have been captured by the pleasure of creating crafts such as those presented in this book! The crafts are beautifully photographed. I have already made a couple of Christmas bags with applique outlines from this book and am going to venture into making a gingerbread man soon.The only thing that I found tricky with this book is that as a beginner some of the instructions are ambiguous as it assumes that I ought to know certain things when I didn't really know at all what was being talked about. I would have preferred some numerical steps to follow when making my bags as some of the instructions are presented with a few things to do in one line and I had to slowly (but surely) unpack each step into about 3 or 4 steps at time! After breaking down the steps myself I was able to make my first couple of things.A great book to start getting into the festive spirit. My wife and I will definitely be on the lookout for more of these type of books after Christmas.

I am a very big fan of Tilda books, but am a bit disappointed with this book as the design team have taken one concept, ie a certain style of snow man and replicated the same design in several different ways. If you only have 25 projects and they are replicating many of the designs, you are not getting a full 25 eclectic individual designs as you might hope. If the design team want to do this, then fine. It would be so much nicer to compensate the reader and make this book value for money by adding in additional designs into the book.This soft back book has 96 pages. It was originally published in 2003, came over to the UK in 2006, and has been in reprint which doesn't surprise me as Tilda is famous world wide, originating in Norway.The photography is always exceptional with all their books, with well instructed details and lovely illustrated diagrams.ContentsFabrics and materialsMaking a good stuffed figureProjects.1. Rocking reindeer2. Santas3. Angels3a. Goodnight angel4. Pyjama snowmen5. Hearts5a small and medium size6. Mice7. Cornet angels8. Striking appliqués9. Christmas hanging with reindeer and sleigh10. Christmas stockings10a. Long and short stockings11. Christmas hanging with snowmen and penguins12. Stylish wall bags13. Gift sacks14. Small sacks15. Snowmen tea cosy16. Gingerbread men17. Gingerbread men decorations18. Little snowmen and snow angels19. Penguins20. Christmas tree21. Painted Christmas motifs22. Craft ball snowmen23. Paper cornets24. Christmas cards25. Christmas gift tagsPatternsSuppliersThere are projects for kids big and little, which is always nice.One of the big thumbs up for me is the FULL SIZE patterns which is excellent.The only reason I gave this book 3 stars, was its repetitive designs, also it lacked its vintage unique style projects which sets Tilda's stunning craft projects so high above the rest.This book does have some very nice patterns, but it's not special unfortunately.If you have not come across Tilda then you are in for a treat. Being a collector of the Tilda books, this one for me was not my favourite.I do hope you will enjoy this book very much and try out some of the other books in this amazing collection of craft books.