Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Fabric present bags – the ultimate in Christmas present wrapping

Christmas in our household (Tier 2, Tier 3 on Boxing Day) has come with minimal trappings this year, Christmas cards slipped between books on the bookshelf being the main attraction, along with a couple of pretty red origami stars fashioned out of a thin layer of wood on the mantlepiece. On Christmas Day, presents from the family consisted entirely of brown cardboard boxes splashed with the names John Lewis, Space NK, Muji and Oliver Bonas (small triumph, I don’t think any had Amazon!) . Daughter No 2, from far off Cambodia, apologised for the lack of festive wrapping and insisted we didn’t open her brown packages until Christmas Day, so we just embraced the brown wrapping theme and didn’t open anything packed in that way until Christmas Day. All wonderfully enjoyable and strangely liberating  – for a one off!

Fabric Christmas present bags

Meanwhile in London (Tier 3 about to become Tier 4, the newest and most restricted of tiers), Daughter No 3 was having none of a brown paper and cardboard Christmas. In a labour of love for the family and in pursuit of as ecologically sound a Christmas as possible in a house where plastic Lego sets loom large, she spent most spare time in December (and probably November too) making reusable fabric packaging. By email I asked if she had made ‘seamed’ bags, assuming she’d opted for those fabric squares which you tie into rabbits’ ears, a manner of present wrapping beloved of the practical and aesthetic Japanese. Feigning not to understand me, she replied she had used french seams on the bags for the foot of the children’s beds but had used ordinary seams in all the other bags which, being lined wouldn’t be visible anyway. Lined present bags!!!! I boomed back in shock by email much in the manner of Lady Bracknell’s “A handbag”. She later admitted in a phone call that she had caught herself wondering why such attention to detail, an idea swiftly followed by a dreadful suspicion of ‘channelling mother’ ! Channelling mother, my foot, if I were going to make fabric present bags – which idea I have dabbled with – I wouldn’t dream of going so far as lining them! I am still agog at such industry. But what a brilliant idea – little of that de-crunching of wrapping paper as you smooth out the recyclable and separate it from the metallic and unrecyclable  – and none of that loosing of your wedding ring in the process as I did when I sorted out the Christmas recycling in London last year!

Jolly fabric Christmas present bags

Today we woke to a snow covered world. Quite unexpected. By lunchtime, as I write, it has gone and everywhere is just wet and cold. We need go nowhere, though we should go for a walk. I shall continue with my Christmas present making – to be delivered goodness knows when. My husband has a vaccine booked for him on the 8th of January, so that’s promising. Daughter No 1 is now working in No 10 and we all have our fingers crossed this week will see parliament approve of the Brexit deal achieved on the 23rd/24th, so that the new year can be just that. The coming year suddenly feels more upbeat and positive.

Foot of bed Christmas present bags Imonogrammed and french seamed!)

Three angels for this year’s Christmas card . All three are very different from the sort expected at this time of year but it seems to me, uniquely relevant to this most singular of Christmases. You might recognise them as the three angels standing on the left in Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ in the National Gallery where they are part of the scene but also strangely outside it, as if even they have difficulty working out the meaning of what is happening before them.

3 angels – loosely based on those by Piero della Francesca in his Baptism of Christ in The National Gallery, London

Piero’s angels are always like no other painter’s angels. Look at his Madonnas and there standing close beside the virgin and child are yet more of these enigmatic figures (see below and here for my 2016 Christmas card.)  Ornately clothed, hair beautiful, and with fine jewels in their hair or on their clothes, each is utterly inscrutable in expression –  more witnesses than messengers?  The angel on the left in the Baptism is another of these impassive beings whose thoughts have been kept in check but whose demeanour registers the solemnity of the occasion. The other two angels though seem quite different. A moment frozen in painting, one mystified, the other slightly agitated, more human than divine – and just the sort of angel I’d like to think might be watching over us during this Christmas.

Angel (based on an angel in Piero della Francesca’s Montefeltro altarpiece of the Madonna and Child with Saints)

Like the year, my annual Christmas card has not turned out quite as desired. What looks ok in the flesh, has not photographed well! The textured Japanese fabric used as the base has made its presence felt under the rather too fine and too satiny silk used for the faces, rendering what should be smooth angelic faces rather bumpy and unhealthy looking! My husband has fiddled around to get the best picture possible for the card itself (and at this very moment sighs are coming from his study next door as he tries to remember how he managed to print the text detailing the picture’s origin as done in the first batch of cards). Ah well, such is life!

For a blog on angels, including more on Piero della Francesca’s see here.