mail's here!

I've been busy with a lot of elfin activity this week.

Trixie made some big leaps the past 6 months with learning to read and she's now very much into writing notes to all of us here at home. You might remember some mailboxes we made last Valentine's Day. They didn't survive terribly long, but were popular with the girls. For Christmas this year, I decided to make something a bit more lasting for Trixie.

Her official letter carrier bag:

The body is navy felted wool, originally sold as a "skirt length". The letters are wool felt with twill tape trim under them. The bag is bound with double fold bias tape and has a cotton webbing handle.

These are the mailboxes she'll deliver to. The grommets will hang on 3M hooks on our bedroom doors. They're all made of wool felt. I used a regular business envelope as a template, but enlarged it by one inch each way to accomodate larger mail. I also added two inches to the height of the flap so it could be folded over to make the portion that supports the grommets. "POST" was satin stiched on the machine and the the bottom portion of the envelope was glued together since I couldn't get it on the machine without sewing through all the layers.

The last part of the set is a cigar box filled with all the stuff we get sent from charities: greeting cards I'll never use, stationary, return address labels and Easter Seals to use as stamps. I even have some preaddressed return business envelopes from credit card companies in there and leftover envelopes from old boxes of valentines.

I think this mail will be far more fun to open than the usual bills.