The Doctor is very very late

So in about 2012, a friend was going on about the Doctor Who Quiet Book. Well we all were, it was really cool. I was reading The Mary Sue A LOT back then and they had an article all about it (Doctor Who Quiet Book Mary Sue article). She wished someone would make it. I wasn't really into sewing much back then but I said I would do something smaller and she found a Doctor Who Plushie. This lead to a lot of  other plushies, which really opened the gateway to a lot of much large projects which you can find on this blog.

Fast foward to now, I've made a lot of large projects, my friend has a new baby and I'm like "I could totally make that book she wanted. It would be easy!". To my delight the pattern was still listed on Etsy, although the woman had changed her online name from Bantam BB to SpaceBat Designs (pattern for Doctor Who Quiet book on Etsy). And I mean it was 9 quid, why wouldn't I?

As I write, I've finished all 12 pages, and overall, it's been very quick really despite the fact that I only finished the previous project in June and I'd not even used much felt. I think what sped things up was that I'm only lightly tinkering with the pattern, and the patterns are larger than some of my previous projects. With my own projects I have to make a lot more decisions than just what fabric or materials am I using. It's been a lot of fun.

The Cover

So on to the cover page. The first choice I made was I was going to embroider on the title of the book rather than cut out felt letters or other fabric. I also decided that I would use the font and colour scheme of the newest Doctor. To do this, I found a picture online and traced it onto the interfacing, then retraced it backwards. I'd planned out my backing fabrics and the cover was set to be blue velvet. I got a bit overexcited and melted it a bit on the edges. I'm not very good at remembering past mistakes as this was not my first time slightly melting this fabric.
The embroidery for the lettering I used was the graded colour kind between a pale yellow and an orangey colour. I ran out with a tiny bit to go, but managed to colour match. Essentially it was fairly easy.

The tiny tardis was a bit harder without some actual blue felt, I was using a navy cotton I had lots of, but being small, it didn't take long.

To finish off the design and make it look more like space, I foolishly decided to try and use up some more of this awful embroidery thread that has gold coloured metal wrapped around it, which is hell on earth to sew with, but all in all for a few stars it was fine!

Guide to Advent Calendar with links

It's over and done, but for anyone who wants the full list, here it is

1. Annunciation - Mary has her pregnancy foretold by Angel Gabriel - large scene ( First Sunday)
2. Joseph is warned by an angel not to divorce Mary - large scene
3. Visitation - Mary visits her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist - large scene
4.  Census document - Mary and Joseph must travel to Bethlehem to participate in the census - small scene
5. A suitcase represents preparation for the journey - small scene
6. Crossed keys represents things you take on a journey, and the keys to heaven of St Peter, head of the first church - small scene
7. Mary and Joseph begin their journey - large scene

8. John the Baptist and and Isaiah predict Jesus coming "make straight the way of the Lord" - large scene - large scene (Second Sunday)
9. Parable of the pearl without price (Matthew 13:45-46) - small scene
10. Priscilla and Aquila, key figures in the early church- large scene
11. The whale that swallowed the prophet Jonah - small scene
12. Noah's Ark - large scene
13. Deborah - prophet and leader in the old testament - large scene
14. Joseph and Mary stop at an oasis on their journey - large scene


15. Wise men watch the star in the east - large scene (Third Sunday)
16. Adam and Eve - large scene
17.  Miracle of the loaves and fishes - small scene
18. Abraham and Sarah - descendants numbered like the stars - large scene
19. Moses as a baby in the reeds - small scene
20. Vine - small scene
21.  No room at the inn - large scene

22. Angels visit the shepherds to announce Jesus birth - large scene (Fourth and final Sunday)
23. Gifts of the magi - gold frankincense and myrrh - small scene
24. Star above the place where Jesus was born - small scene
Nativity scene - individual parts make up a picture
25. Donkey
26. Ox
27. Joseph
28. Mary
29. Jesus

Parts 24 to 29? How long IS Christmas?

And here again we come back to the key point I wanted in my advent calendar. Advent or preparation time for Christmas is what you make of it and the choices you choose to make as a family or community, but the religious festival of preparation that is Lent is one of the Christian calendar's varying dates.
When Lent and Easter fall varies within parameters related to the moon but Lent is always the same length of time.

Christmas is always 25 December, but Advent varies in length and start date related to the day of the week on which Christmas falls. Advent is 4 Sundays before Christmas. Some of you may be old enough to remember Blue Peter making an advent wreath with 4 candles.

What does this mean? If Christmas falls on a Sunday, that's a full extra week of Advent, and the first day of Advent could be in November.  But if Christmas falls on a Monday, Advent is cut short - it's only 23 days.

So how do you manage that on an advent calendar without continually making a new one? I decided to build in some flexibility which would allow people to both follow the religious way of doing things, or to stick with the commercial generally followed way of doing things. I made each element of the final nativity scene something you could add on individually, or, if you choose you could add them on all together.

So "scene" 24 is the star in the east.
Except as you can see, it's not a star, it's a comet.
Some people have thought that the star seen by the wise men was Haley's Comet and I chose to show it like that, partly in honour of my brother who is an Astronomer and studied Comet like stars!

There's no covering leaf here because you add these elements on, much like Mary and Joseph on the donkey earlier.

So how do you know where it goes? Instead of a leaf, you've got an outline behind. and on the back of the star is the number to match up.

For the star on the light background the outline is in black.

The final "scenes" 25 to 29 are the individual parts of the nativity scene.

I wanted there to be a sense of a big reveal to this section, so I decided that there should be a much larger "door" or "flaps" that should open out to reveal the area for the nativity. Having used the road structure through the advent calendar, it made a really useful place to make the flap for the hidden place. Once I'd planned for the flaps I decided to make the hidden area dark grey - to give the feel of a dark cave or stable.

As this area is dark the outlines to add the figures to are white - with gold for the halo edging for Joseph, Mary and Jesus.

The figures are added on in order of importance, ending with the most important!
25 and 26 are the donkey and the ox that are frequently added to nativity scenes.
27 and 28 are Joseph and Mary, and 29 is Jesus.

So if you want to play it safe and only have 25 days every year, you can add on the whole scene for Christmas day every year.

BUT you have started with Advent Sundays and it varies, on a short year 24-29 are added on all together, and if it's a long year, you can add on each element one by one. And in between you can just add the last few on together varyingly.

The last feature is somewhere to hold all the loose parts - there are pockets on the back to hold the leaves and the different bits that come away. Sadly I don't have a picture.

And with that, my posts are all complete! Good news though - I've another project to catch you up on...it's a lot more nerdy.

Step back, step forward, more nativity scenes - 15, 21, 22, 23

Although I concentrated quite a few of the Christmas related scenes in the first week, I didn't want to bunch the rest of them up too much and I also wanted to kind of keep coming back to the nativity each Sunday. The problem was that some of the scenes were really part of the final nativity scene or technically just after it, when the calendar is over with.  I'd already made my calendar 25-29 days because it is based on the 4 Sundays of Advent, not the calendar month of dates.

I did think of extending the calendar even further to include these scenes but I was struggling enough with 29! I decided there would be some foreshadowing and some would be towards the end.

I decided there had to be a Christmas link to all 4 Sundays. Hence Mary and her Angel for scene 1, John's call for Jesus' coming at 8, and then further scenes at 15 and 22.

The easy one to move a little earlier was number 15 - the wise men (and women?).

Obviously they would have been studying the "star" before they started travelling so they could be moved further up the sequence, and depicted in that part of their story. I made sure that their scene would look directly at the star, which was also going to be in the picture as a later stage. Hence the telescope does not look up into the sky.

More map fabric here - I mean it's amazing stuff, and they are planning a journey so why not?

I decided I would try and make one of the figures a woman because why not?  Also stolen from a friend who made me a nativity set from clay with a female wise person.
I also deliberately decided that they would be darker looking people, as tradition says they visited Jesus from Africa, and were definitely from West of Israel.

Just before the final sequence I placed a scene for "no room at the inn" (21).

Here too as I mentioned I decided the innkeeper could be a woman.

I also made use of a map fabric scrap again, to emphasise the inn as a place for travelers and the end of the journey. I like that a negative scene also was not highlighted in a Sunday, which was less deliberate than it was pushed aside for a more interesting scene after.




For  scene 22 I decided I would just have to have the shepherds being sung to early as there was no way to make them have an earlier scene. The angels don't say "Jesus will  be born soon", they say he is born. But I decided 22 was near enough.

Similarly with 23, I decided it's not really a surprise what the gifts of the wise men were, so I just put them as near to the end as possible. They are shown as what they are or represent - gold for kingship, (frank)incense for divinity, myrrh (for his sacrificial death).

Some more randoms - 17 & 20

I guess I could have added this to the random collection post earlier but I didn't want it to go on forever. I suppose the miracle of the loaves and fishes and the image of the vine are both linked into the idea of the central part of many Christian services - communion, but they were mainly chosen as familiar images and stories that I felt an interest in recreating.

If you'll permit me to be harsh on myself, I would say scene 17 - the loaves and fishes is possibly the weakest of all my designs. It's not super interesting or clever, it simply is some loaves and fishes.

Scene 20 - the vine on the other hand is very simple but I just think it came out rather beautifully, specially as, like the pearl without price (scene 9), it was kind of made up to fill a gap sort of late in the day.

One of the things I have enjoyed about the smaller scenes was finding and using as many different leafy, planty related fabric scraps as i could find in my stashes. However, I did get to scene 20 and start worrying that I didn't have any more.


This wasn't strictly true, I did have another leafy fabric, but it had flamingos on it.

So I stitched together two bits to hide the flamingos and I had my last small leaf!

Beginnings and babies - 16, 18 and 19

For now I'm skipping over 15 because it's one of the nativity ones, and I thought these three had a slight thematic link with some randoms interspersed.

From Adam and Eve as first people, to Abraham, founder of the faith, to Moses as baby.

Scene 16 - Adam and Eve had been earlier up the sequence and ended up demoted down the scale to a place that I needed them in the sequence. There's not much to say here about the design. The choice to make them dark skinned is really not specific to them as I wanted all these biblical figures to be nonwhite, moreso here perhaps than with the others. The design is just arranged to be pretty and save me having to work out how to do modest nude people. I did enjoy making the top of the tree 3D though.

 Scene 18 is Abraham surrounded by stars to reflect the line about  his descendants being like stars.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I chose to add in Sarah because she helped him have those descendants and is therefore important too. God chooses her as much as him.

Scene 19 - Moses in the reeds was just an off the cuff quick sketch that kind of worked out small scale. Not much to say about it really. It was very quick and easy to do.

All my ladies - well two of them Scenes 10 & 13

One of the things that started to frustrate me after a while was not just designs I couldn't get right, but I got bored of beards and male characters. Obviously there were quite a few key ones that I wasn't concerned about including, and sometimes the male characters were offstage like Noah, but I wanted some prominent female figures and not just Mary and Elizabeth and Eve, all important but mothers or progenitors. So I went on a search and I found two slightly obscure but significant figures: Deborah (old testament) and Priscilla (Acts of the Apostles). I liked them because their prized features were not entirely about family life:

• Priscilla, with her husband Aquila, was a teacher and early leader of the church and are mentioned equally and predominantly together
• Deborah was a prophet and leader

For scene 10 with Priscilla and Aquila the design was pretty basic. I wanted them in front of a house that they had which was one of the earliest churches.

The sketch here also shows how impatient I am, I was at my parents, so rather than find proper paper, I sliced open some envelopes and used those.

I decided to symbolism this again by using the fabric with writing on it as well as Priscilla with a book in her hand.

The other thing I decided, linking into the "no more beards" thing was that I decided with these Roman sounding names, they either were Roman or they had become Romanised, so I gave Aquila a clean shaven look and left Priscilla's hair uncovered, or perhaps covered with a wig!

I don't really think about scale when I'm making things but it occurred to me at this point that I make very small pics, and I put a 10p coin next to Priscilla's head for scale. It's pretty teeny tiny.

(Bible references for the pair Acts 18:2, 18, 26, Romans 16:3, 1 Corinthians 16:19, 2 Timothy 4:19)

For Deborah (scene 13) I went through several design iterations starting from this idea of Deborah as ordering the leader of her army to go into battle. I started with a sketchy army in action but I quickly realised I am terrible at these kinds of large scenes and also, I had no idea how to do this with fabric.

So I simplified the design to just two figures - Deborah herself and the leader of the troops - Barak.

I then wasn't too sure what to dress him in or what weapons he should carry so I did some googling and found this picture from the tomb of Khnumhotep II of what might be Israelites and I basically stole the whole clothing and bow idea from that.

It was also a key image of her to be seated under a palm tree, and I thought it would be fun if this linked in with a rest stop on Joseph and Mary's journey,  under a palm tree. So I made that key to the placement of those two scenes.

(Bible references for Deborah: Judges 4:1-16; Judges 5:1-31).

Another thing I decided to do to improve the number of women was to add in Sarah to my image of Abraham, after all he would not have had any descendants without her, and to make the innkeeper who wouldn't let the holy family stay a woman as well.

A random collection... 9, 11, 12

I was trying to be very strictly numeric with these posts about the Advent calendar, but it's just not working for me so I'm going to group a bit as it suits me, roughly in order.

Having started with a week of at least loosely nativity related stories for 1-8, and seeded some key elements of the nativity later in the sequence, I then I had to work out what to fill in between. I thought about trying to make some themes - prophets, beginnings but I didn't really find that very inspiring. I definitely wanted the other stories to be visual so that it would be easier to design, and ideally where possible to be familiar stories. Unfortunately as well, sometimes what you can draw is not what you can sew and as well when I chose to change one element others also changed or got moved. There was an overall design to consider as well as individual ones which also altered things as I went along.

Scene number 9 for example, in one set of notes seems to have been planned as Adam and Eve. But by the time I did my full drawing had turned into the wolf lies down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6) - the reference about the peaceable kingdom, Adam and Eve having been moved elsewhere in the design and sequence.

I just couldn't make this work as anything at all design wise, and very late on I eventually I just chose a story I kind of liked and would be to create - the Pearl with out Price parable in Matthew 13:45-46. You can of course make links to the Christmas story, baby Jesus as hidden jewel in a cave. And the parable itself is about the pricelessness of God and his wisdom but I did mainly choose it because I liked it and I liked my design.

Once I chose this one, I wanted a fake pearl to put on. I was very touched to find that my Dad insisted on bringing me a large pearl bead from a collection he has from some old project.

With scene 11 I have an early notes that just says "tree", and then it became Jonah and the Whale, because it's fun and who doesn't like drawing whales? It also moved position from higher up, to lower down the design.

It was one of the easiest to do, alongside the pearl without price.

Scene 12, I have an early note saying Moses in a basket, which later moved elsewhere, and then Daniel in the lion's den, which I also just didn't like drawing, the lions looked like pet cats. So I looked around for a replacement and eyed up another of my designs, which I realised that I had drawn it far too small to execute - Noah's ark. So I made it a larger design to fill this spot. The design was much enhanced by a beautiful blue map fabric I had in my stash.

A pathway - scene 8

Scene 8 at first seems like one of my scattergun approach to inclusions of interesting bible stories, but the reading about St John the Baptist opens the gospel of Mark (Mark 1:1-8) and is one of the readings read in the run up to Christmas. The actual story is about preparing for the adult Jesus, but I guess it is read at this time of year because we are preparing for the arrival of the infant Jesus.

My depiction in a hair shirt in the desert is a classic depiction.

The reading itself  harks back to and specifically references an earlier prophecy in Isaiah (Isaiah 40:3). The key words for this scene is "make straight the way of the Lord".
As a result I decided the scene would extend beyond itself, with the path becoming straight and extending away from it.
To make reference to the (?)intertextuality - reference that also makes reference to another text, and to the idea of prophecy, I decided to make use of some beautiful fabric with writing on it. I tried to make sure I chose writing that was not super legible but was clearly writing. I also put some of it upside down.

Another element to the design I added as a later feature when putting on the numbers, and you can see here, but also in scene 1, is a marker of the fact that this scene is a key point in the journey - a Sunday, the second Sunday of Advent. The number 8 is surrounded by the shape of a flame. 

Added to this I chose to colour code the numbers by weeks. So this first week was a light blue circle round the other numbers. If you go back to the posts about 2-7 you can see this.

The journey begins - Interactive elements - scene 7 & 14

Early in the planning I've mentioned I wanted to have as many places where the reveal would be parts of the actual nativity story. There aren't enough individual scenes to depict and at one stage I decided that perhaps I could have Joseph and pregnant Mary stopping several times along the way. I can't remember how many stops there were originally but in the end I only did two. This also gave a sort of structure to the design with a winding road going across the whole thing.

So scene 7 is a backdrop of the start of the journey to Bethlehem from Nazareth. I made use of some map fabric I had been given to add to the emphasis on journey and added some simple houses.
For the second rest stop I wanted it to link to the scene that would be next to it, where there would be a feature of a palm tree. It was meant to feel like a small oasis of green on a dusty road. In the photo below, the lady in red is from the scene 13 which we will come to later

The interactive element came from the figure of pregnant Mary on a donkey with Joseph.
This image also reflected back to a Hispanic (possibly just Mexican) advent tradition I really like: to have a statue of the pregnant Mary and Joseph is called "La Posada" - meaning the inn (ie the journey to the inn) in the house in the run up to Christmas.
Alongside that (google tells me) there is tradition of re-enactment when two people dress as Joseph and Mary visiting various houses over 9 nights(1 for each month of pregnancy), singing songs until they are allowed in. This represents the way Mary and Joseph were forbidden room at the inn.

As I needed them to face two different ways they needed to be double sided.
Each side is not quite the same.
On one side, we see Mary's leg and foot and Joseph with a stick. And Mary holds the donkey's ear.

On the other side, we see Joseph carrying a bag and Mary sitting side saddle, with just her bottom visible. Her hand on her stomach. Inside the figures is two layers of cardboard to make them stronger and hold their shape better.

But for both, I wanted Mary's hair to be covered. I felt this would be both practical and likely on a journey encountering others.
I then had to decide if I would cover the scene in a leaf, technically Joseph and Mary should be placed on the scene and then moved to the next spot. But I thought for consistency and ease, they should be in place at the start and then move, and so I made a leaf to cover them

There weren't a lot of interactive elements in the whole project but I built on this later with the nativity scene. More on that later.

4, 5, 6 pick up... a suitcase?

I had originally imagined I would find lots of parts of the story to fill every single stage, but this was very rapidly obvious I wouldn't be able to do. I also realised I would lose patience if I did larger scenes for every stage. I decided interspersed among larger scenes I would have littler ones that were simpler or just easier in some way.

The first 7 scenes were all about the start of the journey. 1-3 about finding out about the pregnancy, but then 4-6 about preparing for or anticipating the journey to Bethlehem (Luke 1-5)


Thus 4 is the Census that kickstarts the journey.
Then you have 5 and 6 and I thought about what you take on a journey, specially from a child's perspective - which is a suitcase and keys.
Obviously neither would necessarily be a real thing for Mary and Joseph at the time but they would be comprehensible to a child.
Keys also have added symbolism for Christians with the image of the keys to the Kingdom of God (Matthew 16:18-19) being offered to Peter and a symbol of the Pope in the Catholic church.

Alongside deciding to have some smaller scenes to sew I decided since they were different in shape and scale I would have a different style of leaf. Also although I had a fair amount of the leafy green material I used for the larger scenes I didn't want to run out, and I did have a variety of other leafy decorated material scraps. Some of these leaf or faintly plant-y or green scraps were too small for the larger scenes and satisfying to use up as well.

A brief flit by - scene 3

I'm not intending to do posts for every individual scene, but unfortunately, I can't work out how to group this one with the ones following it, so I'm going to do a quickie, and then a longer post.

Number 3 is "The Visitation"
- the visit of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. The scene is a sort of tag on to the double header of my angel related scenes.
The last of the preamble stuff before the proper story of the journey of nativity really. (Luke 1:26-38)

 I didn't really have a complex design in mind, and the only thing that changed at all was I had originally designed them both with their hair covered (you can just about see in this pic from the back of an early stage).

Typically European Catholics at least depict Mary with a full covering of her hair, or at the very least a veil. And I just went with that in my first design, but I didn't like it particularly and I wondered if she would really wear her hair covered when with a female cousin. I looked into Jewish customs around hair covering, and it seemed like she wouldn't, so I gave them hair instead. Although apparently one way to cover your hair in some Jewish customs is to cover it with a wig! So maybe it didn't matter.

I like the simple shapes of this scene and how it came out.