Honestly, I should be dressed and out the door by now. I want to get to the grocery store and have another errand or so to do. Instead I am on my second cup of coffee and thought I would do a quick post. The grocery store can wait.
I spent all week down with a cold – honestly these grand daughters of ours really need to stop sharing germs with me. Ray is fine, the girls only felt mildly ill for about a day or two and I felt crummy for over a week. I think I am on the other side of it, just in time for Thanksgiving!!
While I was being lazy on the couch and scrolling Facebook, I saw a post in our (sort of) local sewing group. Someone had made these ornaments and I really liked them. Looking at the tutorial on AppleGreen Cottage, I saw how easy they would be to make. I carried my Kleenex, Ricola cough drops and water up to the sewing room and got started. I love them! The bells really finish them off but the center could have anything – a pretty button or a fluffy pom pom would also be cute. I am going to put a thread loop on them for hanging.
When we were with the girls two weeks ago, A was really enjoying playing with American Girl Dolls (they were her mother’s). I thought about making something for them for Christmas and had this brainstorm to make a set of hospital items. My daughter in law is a physician so the girls see her wearing scrubs quite often. She is a radiologist so I am trying to create a way for them to play pretend doctor. There are two dolls so one can be the patient and the other, a doctor.
A few months back, the conversation above happened between A and Daddy. Clearly she is trying to understand what Mom does when in her office (she works at both the hospital and from home). Maybe she doesn’t understand one doesn’t have to take their skin off to look at the bones, she does seem to grasp that taking pictures of bone suits is the way to make some money. Hahaha
Additionally, I got to work on a Christmas tree skirt for Julia. This is her first time putting a tree in her apartment so she is collecting a few holiday items. I didn’t use a pattern for this – but in case you are wondering, I used five inch squares and kept the diameter at less than 42″ so I could back it with one piece of fabric. The pom poms really add some character to the skirt. It was an easy project and I will bring it to her on Thursday.
OK – my coffee is now cold (ugh!) so it is time to get dressed and head off to the grocery. For those of you in the US – enjoy the holiday this week. I know the world is a bit of a mess but we always have so much to be grateful for. Find those small blessings and count them up. Happy Thanksgiving!
Several weeks ago I read a post over at From My Carolina Home where Carole shared a community project shared between woodworkers and quilters in her area. The woodworking group makes lovely toys and then quilts and stuffed bears are added to them as gifts for local children in their area. She mentioned they could use more of the 18″ quilts if any of us would like to make some.
I love this sort of feel-good project. An 18″ quilt is an easy way to spend a bit of time and use some fun fabric. The first small quilt was made with a leftover piece of a whole cloth quilt I made some years ago. The original quilt was used to display the fabric when I worked as a vendor at a few quilt shows. After this, I cut it into two projects donated to A Doll Like Me.
This left me with one more piece. I squared it to 18″ and bound it with this chartreuse solid. I am happy to use the last bit. This panda print is so cute and I am a tad bit sad it is all used up.
Next I took a box of 3 1/2″ squares and quickly sorted for juvenile prints. Then I cut a scrap of bright green polka dot fabric into squares the same size. Alternating them made a fun, cheerful quilt.
Of course, this larger scale green polka dot makes the perfect backing for the quilt. Finishing it off with a dark purple binding frames the whole thing nicely.
I did a machine stitched binding, which looks cute on the front and not so great on the back. I thought the stitch should extend beyond the edge of the binding on the front but that means it doesn’t lay on the binding on the back. So, lesson learned. I should have stitched the binding closer to the outer edge so the back would have a neater appearance.
Thank you Carole for sharing this fun opportunity to help out with your holiday project. I am so impressed by the wooden toys donated by the woodworking group. They are so sweet and what child wouldn’t want to play with wagons and strollers. Gifts like these will spark the imagination of the child fortunate enough to receive them!
Sharing this just for fun – H is taking a gymnastics day camp this week. But somehow someone brought in parrots to show the kids. She had the opportunity to hold one and went for it. She is an adventurous kiddo.
Happy Holidays to you! Last I wrote, we were planning to spend Christmas Eve and day with my son and his family. We haven’t had the pleasure of watching the girls experience Santa and all of the related excitement. Alas, it was not to be. My son and his wife came down with the bug and were feeling ill. It was decided that each family would have separate Christmas celebrations in an effort to squash this virus we keep passing back and forth. We will go see the kids when given the all clear. We did FaceTime on Christmas Day and it looked like they were doing well enough. My DIL was on the couch trying hard to get well since she has to be at work today.
This year I made a strong effort to limit the use of paper when wrapping gifts. The challenge was actually quite fun and a bit success.
Here are a few of the gifts I wrapped using either holiday gift bags I made this fall or large pieces of fabric as wrapping paper. The gifts looked really cute under the tree.
The result!!
Check out the small pile of paper on the right. Often times we fill a large trash bag with paper on Christmas morning. Granted there were only the three of us here, but this is still a huge improvement. On the left you see the stack of bags, folded fabric and ribbons all ready for next year. Hopefully next year I will have more gift bags made so when my husband wraps his gifts he won’t have to use paper. At any rate, I call this a success.
Dairy Free Eclairs
Ray was the baker for our Christmas dessert this year. He made these incredible eclairs. The ganache and the whipped cream filling were both dairy free. I was so impressed.
The week before Christmas the girls went to visit Santa. When asked what she wanted, little sister replied “a box with stripes and polka dots and a purple bow”. Santa told her ‘he would see what he could do’. These words from Santa so impressed A and she repeated them to me verbatim several times. She was focused on that box and even before her visit with Santa, she only asked for that exact box.
My daughter in law really wanted Santa to come through on his promise. Not finding any striped and polka dotted boxes, she made her own with stickers. I love this so much – making A’s Christmas wish come true. By the time they unwrapped these gifts on Christmas morning, little sister was so overwhelmed by everything that big sister had to open these for her. But I know she will remember that she got just the box she wanted.
The weather has been fierce for much of the country lately. I am holding good thoughts for those who have been impacted by the tragic storms in the Northeast. Not comparable at all, but still interesting, was the ice storm that happened recently. My husband took this picture of our rain chain. Two days after this storm the temps climbed to 50 degrees and everything melted off.
Today I am meeting a girlfriend for breakfast. We were really good friends in the 1980’s. Somehow we lost track of each other but with the help of the internet I found her last year. We have been chatting on the phone regularly since then. She doesn’t live up here but happens to be visiting family about 40 miles from me. I am so excited to see her! We think it has been 30 years since we last were together. Off to get ready for my date!
Wishing everyone a year of joy, good health and loads of creativity in 2023!
It has been so long since I have written a post, I hardly know where to begin! From mid-November to now, I have been sick with one thing after another. This has been incredibly annoying! There are so many respiratory viruses going around and I believe I have sampled all of them. Our area has been hit so hard that my primary care physician’s office is unable to see any respiratory/flu cases in person because the staff has come down with it and now they are very short handed. It is just wild. The kids have it the worst and the children’s Tylenol and Motrin is flying off the shelves. Anyway, in case you’ve wondered, that is what caused me to go missing. I have been reading and watching TV and doing bits and pieces of sewing as I could.
I think I need to do a general post to catch up with what has happened around here. This blog is somewhat a journal and I can’t just ignore a whole six weeks!
In mid-November my amazing sister hosted an early Thanksgiving for our family. There were about 50 people attending and another 15 couldn’t make it. We haven’t had the group together in a very long while and this was great fun. My parents have six children (my sisters and I) who then in total had 21 children and those grandchildren have had 16 children. If you add in all of the spouses and partners, we have one big family! When I think of the numbers that make up our group, I always come back around to my parents. I am so grateful they had a big family and started this whole ball rolling!
When we all got together it seemed like every single one of the kids attending was coughing like crazy. The following week, the adults started to catch the bug. It was nuts – but also worth it to be able to see everyone in one place.
Two weeks later was Thanksgiving. We had dinner at my son’s house. Look at this big girl learning to baste the turkey! We enjoyed a smaller group this time. It was pure luck that most people felt decent for the holiday. (The girls have also been sick constantly for the past 6 or 8 weeks).
Being home so much did allow me to work on a holiday quilt. I saw a free pattern by Cheryl at Meadow Mist Designs called Candy Circle. I have a very large bin of holiday fabrics. Many of them were already cut into five inch squares which made putting this together quite easy. I chose the gray and white background to give it a modern wintry look.
When I had the quilt top on the floor for basting, I decided I wasn’t happy with the large expanse of gray in the center. Not sure how it popped into mind, but I thought adding a big snowflake would be fun. My husband created the template for the snowflake and I found some white, tone on tone fabric with a very slight shimmer to it. Perfect!
I fused it to the center while the quilt top was on the floor and then stitched the raw edges of the snowflake first, before I started to quilt it.
Quilting this piece was a bit unwieldy but overall, it went really well. On each section, white, gray, and colorful, I did a different motif. This kept me interested – honestly, quilting something this big becomes a bit mind-numbing for me after a bit.
It is now on Julia’s bed and I think she really likes it. (I couldn’t resist the snowflake pillow when I saw it in the store. It looks like it was made for the quilt!) Most impressive to me was the fact that I made the quilt top completely from stash. I had to buy the backing fabric but otherwise, this was all made using fabric and batting I had on hand!
In the early fall, I went to a quilt show and as I wandered the vendors, I saw this advent calendar. I know I could easily make this but it was all finished and so cute. Supporting the vendors is important – I know I was very appreciative when quilters shopped my booth at shows in the past. I picked it up for the girls and later on headed over to the Dollar Store. Each pocket has two items in it, one for each girls. Some candy, some hair ties, stickers, and holiday stamps. This picture is from the first December 1st. I think they have enjoyed their daily treats. (It is hung somewhat high because of their Labrador – A calls him a Wabrador– puppy who would surely sniff out the forbidden chocolate).
Moving on! I have also been sewing gifts for the girls for Christmas. I am excited to be able to spend Christmas with them. We haven’t ever been there to watch them on Christmas morning so this year will be extra special.
This apron is for little sister. It is lined so she can wear it either way. This fabric is an older print that has been in the holiday fabric bin for a while now. I think she will love the cookie print. For big sister I made one with princesses and castles. It is already wrapped and somehow I forgot to take a picture of it.
I also made each child a teddy bear. I have never made a stuffed animal and have to say, this was really easy. For me, the most challenging part was stitching the mouth. I had to take it out a couple of times to get a decent result. The teddy bear pattern is from TieDye Diva. Here is a link for you. The pattern comes with some clothes and I did use them for the pants. For the hoody, I went over to Best Dressed Bears. She has lots of simple and super cute teddy bear clothing patterns. Here is the link to the hoody. The patterns over at Best Dressed Bears are made for a slightly bigger stuffed bear so I just made the pieces a smidge shorter in length which did the trick.
OK – I think that sums up the last six weeks. After soooo many boxes of tissues, cups of tea and honey, inhalers, antibiotics, humidifiers, and more naps than I can even count, I think life is back on track. I hope you are healthy and happy. Julia is home and has been patiently waiting around for me to feel better. We love going to some of the cute towns around here for window shopping and just enjoying the Christmasy vibe. Hopefully we will do that tomorrow. Fingers crossed!
Linking up with lots of fun blogs. Check it out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.
As I mentioned the other day, I came across a quilt top from my guild’s Community Service team. Nothing like an impending move to get me going on this top. It took no time at all to get it basted and stippled.
Colorful Chaos!
This scrappy quilt is one crazy flurry of color. Most of the prints are from the 1980’s and 1990’s as far as I can tell. Lots and lots of novelty fabrics were used. The person who pieced it alternated rows of seven inch squares with rows of 3 1/2″ squares and rectangles. It is much like an I-Spy quilt and will be fun for someone to look at and enjoy the variety of prints.
Celebrating Valentine’s Day and then St. Patrick’s Day.
So many holidays are represented in this crazy quilt. Christmas and Easter, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day fabrics are all over the place. For as many novelty fabrics as are included, it was interesting to note she didn’t include any Halloween fabrics.
Kokopelli right next to Easter Bunnies and Hens. 🙂
Kokopelli (the flute playing, dancing characters on blue) are symbols of fertility and rain. Interesting placement next to rabbits and hens, both of whom are quite prolific at reproducing. Hahaha. Coincidental placement, I am sure.
I backed the quilt with black and white polka dots and used the same for the binding. In the interest of efficiency, I machine bound it front and back. I need to practice this – my machine binding is less than precise.
A very messy craft
Just after Thanksgiving, Julia, my mom and I made some cinnamon applesauce ornaments. These are very easy to make though the dough is very sticky. There are tons of links to make these ornaments. We used the cheapest cinnamon and applesauce we could find.
Once the ornaments were dried, we used puff paints and decorated them. It was a lot of fun to do and the ornaments smell so yummy. Note – these are not edible! They would taste horrible and even when rolling them out, it seemed strange not to taste the dough. If you make these, enjoy the fragrance but make sure not to taste them! Some of ours will go on the tree and others will be given to a few of our neighbors.
Julia and I plan to go to town this afternoon and wander our local shops. We have such a cute downtown area and I am looking forward to this. Also, tomorrow a local nursery is hosting a group of teenage crafters and holding a holiday event. We are both looking forward to browsing their crafts and supporting their entrepreneurial spirit.
Enjoy the weekend everyone!
Linking with my usual parties. Check them out at the top of the page, under Link Ups.
Post Update: Two things I wanted to update here. First of all, the winner of the giveaway on this post is Darci. Congrats Darci and I hope you enjoy the fabric. Second update: I talked about the Christmas Through the Decades later in this post and mistakenly said it was on Netflix. However it is really available on Amazon Prime’s streaming service. Sorry for the misinformation.
Hello everyone. If you are new to my blog, coming here from the Holiday Tales and Traditions Blog Hop, welcome. I have been blogging since 2014 (which seems crazy but it has been over six years now)! I would love to connect with you and invite you to take a look around to see what Needle & Foot is all about.
This week I am hosting a blog hop to share some traditions celebrated over the holidays. I asked a number of bloggers to write a post telling a tale they remember from their holidays or a tradition they celebrate during the holidays. Last year I wrote about family traditions from this time of year and I really enjoyed reading comments about the traditions all of you remember. I thought I would carry this forward to this season as well. We certainly need to come together and lift each other’s spirits during this time of year, especially in 2020 when so much feels heavy and abnormal. I hope you will enjoy the hop. Be sure to click through to the other blogs and enjoy some holiday stories.
I have a few tales to share with you. One from my childhood Christmas memories and the others from Christmases spent with my children. Because I think blog posts are more fun with photos, I am randomly including holiday pictures here and there.
Ian and I, Christmas 1994
When my three boys were young, Christmas was naturally an exciting time. As it is for most kids, right? After we put up the tree, I would wrap the gifts from Mom and Dad and put them under the tree. This happened about ten days or so before Christmas. My boys would spend a lot of time checking out the presents, shaking them, trying to guess what they were. It drove me crazy if they guessed correctly – I wanted it to be a surprise on Christmas morning and I don’t have the best poker face! So, one year I decided to try to outsmart them. I bought three rolls of wrapping paper. Using one roll for each boy, I wrapped their gifts. Then I didn’t put any tags on the gift. They were just blank. Under the tree they went. The boys were totally befuddled. “Mom, how do we know whose is whose?” they would ask. I would casually reply, ‘oh, I’ll figure it out.’ or ‘don’t worry about it, we can figure it out on Christmas.’ They went nuts and I thought it was hilarious. On Christmas morning, I played Santa (usually it was one of the boys) and passed gifts out to them. When each boy had gifts wrapped all in one type of paper, they figured out what I had done.
The following year, I knew I couldn’t pull the same stunt. It would not be as fun because they would know what I was doing. Instead, I switched name tags between two of the boys. When wrapping Ian’s gifts, I put a tag on them saying “For Andrew”. On Andrew’s gifts, I did the same, putting a tag on them saying “For Ian”. Kyle’s gifts had his name on them (I couldn’t figure out a way to mix it up any further without making some sort of mistake.) Christmas morning I played Santa again and placed all of the ‘Andrew’ gifts in front of Ian and the ‘Ian’ gifts in front of Andrew. Fooled them again!
My favorite holiday quilt-I hang it each season.
Let’s go back in time now to Christmas in the 1960’s when I was a child. I have a fond memory of one year when my father was scheduled to work at church on Christmas morning. I am sure it was the only year this ever happened but there we were, waking up and Dad was going to be gone for the majority of the morning. Mom insisted we would all just wait until he got back and then we would open gifts. Not so easy for a child, let along six of them! To distract us, Mom thought she would light a fire in the fireplace. Well the damper wasn’t opened and she totally smoked out the living room. She sent us all outside while the smoke cleared. I remember being on the front lawn with my five sisters in our pj’s on Christmas morning. I wonder what the neighbors thought of that. 🙂
Since I grew up in the 1960’s, I had a lot of fun watching a show on Amazon Prime recently, called Christmas Through the Decades. The episode on the 1960’s was especially fun. I enjoyed hearing what the top selling toys were for that decade. The list is slightly different depending on what you are reading but this was the list from the documentary.
1960 – Chatty Cathy 1961 – Ken Doll 1962 – Slinky 1963 – Mouse Trap Board Game 1964 – GI Joe (“Pull his ‘dog tag’ and he will issue commands”) 1965 – Rock’em Sock’em Robots 1966 – Spirograph 1967 – Battleship 1968 – Hot Wheels Cars 1969 – Big Wheel
I think it is interesting that, other than GI Joe and Chatty Cathy, all of these classic toys remain popular today. I read that GI Joe is going to be re-introduced but I am not sure if that is already happening.
1/2 yard bundle of Wintertide and 1 yard of an old fashioned Santa print
Thanks for taking this little trip down memory lane with me! Since this post mostly centered on childhood gifts, I would love to hear your memories of toys that were popular when you were a child. Did you receive something you really wanted or give your child a toy he or she was drooling over? Leave a comment – it is so much fun for me to read your experiences and I know other readers will enjoy going through the comments as well. I would love to give one of you a gift this year as well! I will draw a random name from the comments and send along a fun holiday package of fabric (see above) to the winner. Winner will be selected on Friday evening, giveaway is open to US residents due to the cost of postage.
The Holiday Tales and Traditions Blog Hop is being celebrated on the following blogs:
It is the fourth of December and I am starting to feel some Christmas Spirit! I love this time of year and in 2020 we need every reason to celebrate and impart joy. I have two small projects to share with you today.
The First Three Stockings
For my younger grand daughter, I had the fun task of making a Christmas stocking. Three years ago I made a set for my son, his wife and my oldest grand daughter. When I did this, I set aside fabric to make more stockings if/when his family grew.
Scrappy Christmas Stocking
This stocking is number four for their family. I used the easy peasy quilt-as-you-go method for the strips. As with the other stockings, I put a ‘toe’ on the foot of the stocking and embroidered a red line of stitching across it. Fortunately I saved some of the twill tape and wooden buttons (made by my husband!) so the stocking is a perfect match for the first three. I think it is super cute – the line of fabric was so much fun when I had it in the shop. It is long gone now.
Next project? Well, remember how I have been ‘cleaning’ my sewing space? I sorted through some of my Christmas fabric. I have a large bag of vintage (1970’s-1980’s) holiday fabric and cut much of it into 3″ and 5″ squares with the AccuQuilt. Once I had that stack of squares sitting there, I couldn’t just put them away, right??
I decided to make a quick patchwork runner for the top of this drop leaf table. (My mom loaned this to me a long time ago for our Downieville house. We have since sold the house and I am hoping she doesn’t ask for it back…. I love the table!) I plan to put a set of photos here of my kids with Santa. I look forward to looking at those pictures each year. But I haven’t brought that box up yet. Julia and I plan to do some decorating this weekend and will put up the tree early next week.
As I have said so many times before, simple patchwork is by far my favorite of any quilt. I am so nostalgic and love the look of this – what can I say? This would have been made even cuter with some hand quilting but I really wanted to use it now. So instead I used a variegated holiday thread I had from Mettler and did simple straight lines.
If you look at the fabrics, you will see the small print of white objects on red (next to the holly on white). This fabric is definitely from 1978. It is the same fabric my sister, Cathy, used to make wedding favors for her December, 1978 wedding. (Side note – if you want to read a fun post from several years ago, I wrote about all the weddings in our family and how most of us made our wedding gowns. Click here for the post)
OK – that is it for today. I do want to let you know I have a few fun things coming up on the blog! Next week I will be hosting a Guess Who game. I have childhood pictures from lots of quilter/bloggers. I want to see if you can match of the adorable faces to the right quilter. Look for that on Wednesday, December 9th. Then the following week, on Wednesday December 16th, I am hosting a Holiday Memories Bloghop. Lots of us will be posting about some of our favorite holiday traditions and memories or stories. I am so looking forward to reading these. Keeping spirits bright in 2020!!
Happy Friday everyone! It has been a long time between posts. Without whining I will just say I caught a bug just before Thanksgiving, it moved from a cold to bronchitis to pneumonia and set me back a bit. Thankfully, all is well now!
Our house is decorated and the lights are up. This always makes me so happy. I love this time of year. Julia and I have made a few batches of cookie dough and froze the cookies raw. We can then pop them in the oven a bit closer to Christmas.
I also made two batches of these amazing Sweet and Spicy Walnuts. A friend of Ray’s gave us two huge bags of (shelled!) walnuts. They are addictive and the three of us have been eating them constantly. Yesterday Julia had a few friends over and they went through them as well. I wanted to gift some so I will likely need to make one more batch. Fortunately, they are super easy to make. You want to give them a try, trust me.
When Julia’s friends were here yesterday, they made some gingerbread cookies. This one is my favorite.
Sewing…. This is my busy season with my shop. Meaning the majority of my sewing has been Chemex Cozies for my customers. I only have one left to go and hope to finish that one today or tomorrow. Nothing too exciting to show you there.
I also made doll clothes for my grand daughter. Of course, in my rush to get that package mailed off, I totally forgot to take any pictures! I found a template on-line for making little diapers for her doll. With her little sister coming in March, I though it would be fun for her to have diapers for her own baby. I am not sure she will be able to put them on and off herself? They have velcro closures but still might be a trick for her. I made them in a few sizes because I wasn’t sure what would fit her baby dolls. We don’t want them to leak, do we?? Haha. I also made her a set of flannel pajamas and a little set with shorts and a t-shirt. All were made with scraps and bits of elastic and it was a fun sewing session. If you want to give this a try, here is a great link to several free patterns for doll clothes.
There are a few gifts in process as well. Those will be shared after the holidays. Finally – I am working on the November piecing for the Mosaic Mystery Quilt. When I got sick, I really got behind with this project. So I have to get the November and December piecing done. It is looking really good though. There are a couple of other QALs and BOMs starting soon that I want to join but if I am behind on this one, it will be a challenge. So wish me luck!
Last week I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with my son and his family. They were spending a long weekend in Colorado while my daughter-in-law interviewed for a job she is interested in. Since moving and changing jobs is a huge decision, the kids wanted time to look at the area without the added help of their two year old daughter. So I got to be the nanny for a few days.
I had not been to Denver until this trip. Denver is at an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet and I usually avoid high altitudes because of my issues with migraines. But it seemed like a reasonable decision to go and spend time with the kids and hope for the best with my head.
Fortunately, it was a wonderful trip and my head only gave me a bit of grief one evening. We stayed in an Air BnB in the perfect location. We were walking distance to a little park and coffee shop. Across the road and just down a little ways was the Denver Zoo and a great natural history museum. We kept ourselves very busy!
All sorts of sparkles.
Right before I left, I put together a little project for my grand daughter and I to do together. I wanted to make a Christmas ornament with her using what I had around the house. I gathered some green felt and a little piece of green velvet. From these, I cut some triangles to make Christmas trees. Then I went outside to find a branch that might work for the trunk of the tree. I topstitched the triangles together and put the tiniest bit of stuffing inside. Then I used hot glue to affix the branch/tree trunk. I had a container with an odd mix of sequins and shiny things in it which would make perfect decorations for the trees.
An artist at work.
We had so much fun decorating these little trees. I squirted a pool of Tacky Glue on a piece of waxed paper and gave my little one a q-tip to apply the glue to the tree. Then she carefully picked out a sparkle or sequin to put on each spot of glue. I was impressed with her attention span and how carefully she chose her decorations. It was so hard not to tell her where to put something!
Concentrating and creating.
When she was done, we had four sweet trees.
This one is for Grammy.
I kept one to hang on our tree here at home and she took the other three back to Vermont. I just love this age. We really had a wonderful time together.
Now I am back at home and catching up on things. I am also enjoying a cold that I caught during the trip. Yuk. Doesn’t it seem like this happens all the time – fly somewhere and then catch a bug?
Thanksgiving is this week in the US and I am getting ready to cook. Julia came home last night on the train. Yahoo!! We are hoping to spend lots of time baking and hanging out over the long weekend. She will also be studying a lot – end of quarter projects are due soon and then she has her first round of final exams. Busy girl!
Finally, make sure to come by the shop this weekend! I will be holding a 20% off sale starting on Small Business Saturday lasting through Cyber Monday. All yardage, precuts, patterns and notions are all on sale! This is a great time to stock up for yourself or to choose some gifts for those special people on your list. All orders of $10 or more will receive a free fat quarter tucked in with your order. Happy shopping!!
Now that Christmas is done and gifts have been given and received, I thought I would share what I made with you. Usually I try to find a fun project to make and give during the Christmas season. In recent years I have made purses, zip pouches, table runners and hot pads. This year I decided to make an apron for my Vermont daughter-in-law. Also, I made hot pads for my California son and his girlfriend as well as my Toronto son and his wife. These projects were quick and satisfying.
For the apron, I upcycled a duvet cover that I had bought a while back. I was thrilled to find this cover in a tan and cream stripe. The neutral colors and the feel of the fabric assured me I would easily find many uses for the fabric. I had a vintage pattern from 1975 that I have been holding on to, thinking it would make a really cute apron.
Originally the pattern was designed for a wrap around dress and let me just say, I would have totally loved wearing this dress at age 15 (not that I was necessarily 15 in 1975… oh wait, I was.) Anyway, I had a really similar dress that I made out of a green striped seersucker fabric. I was so cool.
Ok, back to the apron. I had seen these Japanese work aprons and really liked them – this pattern is a bit of a compromise between a standard apron and the Japanese wrap style. This one is more fitted with darts in the bodice.
It wraps around the back with the tie coming through an opening left in the side seam.
I finished the interior seams by folding the raw edges in and top stitching them for a clean look. This fabric would likely fray in the wash so this will prevent any issues.
I even remembered to put a little label on the inside.
Overall, this was a fun project and hopefully my daughter-in-law will get lots of use out of it. She is a great cook so I suspect she will use it.
On to the hot pads! I wanted to make something with the Maker Maker fabric I have in the shop. I cannot even express how much I love this fabric!! I made Chemex Cozies out of the Grid fabric and the gray and black Lines fabric. They were far and above, my top sellers for the Christmas shopping season.Anyway, I thought I would make some hot pads using the Grid fabric and the cats. The linen has such a nice texture and weight, making it perfect for kitchen accessories. These finished at at eight inches square and are filled with two layers of Insul Bright, making them nice and thick.
The next gift I want to share was not made in the sewing room! My husband decided he wanted to make a gift for each of the kids. The boys and their spouses received gorgeous rolling pins made with pieces of walnut and oak that he laminated together. He turned them on his lathe to make a one piece rolling pin. I just love them! The kids were taken with the wonderful finish and really appreciated the work that went into these.
Each piece is different from the next with the stripes and color variations making them unique.
Since Julia isn’t really in need of a rolling pin just yet, he made her a piggy bank. She had such a great time with Daisy and Ella last year, he thought this would be a fun way to remember that summer.
This was a challenging project but it turned out so cute!I love the shape of this little pig’s body and her curly tail. It was so much fun to watch Ray making these projects during the months before the holidays. I love having a few handmade gifts under the tree. I also made some placemats for my parents but didn’t think to take pictures. I will take some the next time I am up at their house so I can share them. Were you able to make any of your holiday gifts this year? If so, share in the comments. I would love to hear about them!
