Hanukkah Garland

Talia is so jealous of all the Christmas decorations she sees in our neighborhood so I try to make her feel special by putting up Hanukkah decorations in our home. When I was growing up you couldn't GET Hanukkah decorations anywhere so ours were all homemade-- even though we weren't such a crafty family (well, I always was but certainly no one else...). Now you can Hanukkah decorations at Bed Bath and Beyond, Party City, Target and certainly online. I even bought some strings of lights with dreidels on them for this year. I wouldn't want them to be mistaken as Christmas lights, so I think I'll keep them inside.

I've been collecting Hanukkah fabric for a few years now. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it. I still might make a quick quilt but it would suck to work on something you can only use for a few weeks out of the year. I ended up making a Hanukkah Garland to hang in the house. I just looked at different garlands on flickr and came up with the concept. I made a dreidel template, cut them out of each fabric and appliqued the letters for "Happy Hanukkah" on it. I used a Jewish star to separate the two words, tucked it all into some navy bias tape and hung it up. I added silver, gold and blue ribbon in between the letters "for fancy" as Talia would say. I wish I used some interfacing to stiffen up the pieces. I knew I should but I was lazy as usual. It only took two or three days and interfacing would certainly have slowed me down. I'm always in too much of a hurry-- especially when the project is not a gift... A lesson learned, I suppose.