Create Christmas – A Collection of Lovely Seasonal Things to Make

I have sewn and crafted from an early age. When our daughter, Annie, opened our shop Cleggs in York in 2012, we produced some of the stock and kits ourselves. Handmade items proved to be very popular.

When Annie left the shop to become a teacher, my husband, Mark and I took over the business. Over the years, it has provided an outlet for lots of ideas and creativity.

Christmas has become a favourite time of year for us to make and create. We have worked with some great suppliers of felted animals, hand made in Nepal. These characters have inspired my Christmas window displays, such as a woodland village, a Christmas market and a clockmaker’s shed.

The scenes and the characters triggered my husband’s imagination and he has written three children’s story books based on the scenes (under his writing name, Jon Markes).

Our theme for 2025 is planned to be Santa’s Workshop, hence the reason for creating the papier-mâché elves on page xx.

Through talking to our customers, I have found that a love of making is becoming ever more popular.

This got me thinking about sharing my projects and our previous book, Create was the result.

In this book you will find instructions to make many of my Christmas makes which we have sold in the shop over the years.