To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!
It’s right around this time every year that I remember how much I dislike the season of giving. I love giving presents when I find/make just the right thing for someone; I dislike having to buy something just because it’s xmas. I hate, hate, hate being on the receiving end when someone clearly felt required to give me something—it takes all the fun out of being able to appreciate the thought behind the present.
Moof is only sad because he’s not allowed to eat the ornaments. Photo by Carl Pfranger.
Growing up, giving holidays were always followed by a series of trips to the store to exchange all manner of things that didn’t fit or really weren’t my style—that, or trying to find a way to donate things that couldn’t be exchanged (which generally didn’t happen, so they became clutter in a mini-hoard). So, that’s the long-winded bah-humbug excuse for why my tween and teen niblings are all getting gift cards this year—instead of having to go return things from us in the days after Christmas, perhaps they can go to the store with us while we’re in town that week and use their gifts on things that suit them best.
Gift cards are boring to unwrap, so I made a few gift card stockings as well. I personalized them with embroidered initials, and topped them with a bit of stashed fleece. Really, I was procrastinating on working on a quilt that I’ve lost the drive to finish.
The easy way would be a single layer with pinked seam allowances to stop potential fraying. I made mine with a lining, because it means neat insides and I wanted to experiment with ordering of seams (that is, sewing the lining, cuff, and outside for one half together, then to the other, rather than some complicated nesting process).
Charm squares are the perfect size for these if you want to make a few of your own—you’ll need four per stocking. The cuffs are 3.5″x5″ rectangles (quilting cotton can work there too, or stash bust some fleece/Minky scraps). You can download the template I used if you want to muddle through construction on your own.
Despite my current lack of Yuletide gaiety, I am looking forward to the vacation time and chance to head back to MO to see my family! What’s your favorite part of the holiday season?
Three presents down (including this one from last week), a handful more to go. I am making three of the cosmetics bags total—the finished one here, the one cut out and half quilted that is also shown, and one other.
Also, one more of the little zipper bags, and one or two other small things. By next Friday. Yikes! It has been fun working out the kinks in construction process for the big bags. I am not sure how to translate my finagling into a tutorial yet, though.
I haven’t been quilting lately, but I have been coming up with great ideas for the new year!
From around the web this week: The Oldest UFO from the Quilter’s Newsletter Blog. Unlike the author, all of my unfinished latchhook projects are lost to the sands of time (I can think of at least three, one might have been finished). Did you do latchhook as a child (or adult, for that matter)?
Modern Mirage from Freshly Pieced. This is my favorite quilt I saw online this week.
Happy New Year! I can’t believe it is already 2012. 2011 went by so quickly. We’re en route back to New York today, but I have one more Christmas reveal—an eyeglasses case that I made for Mom (to go with reading glasses I purchased), who claimed she only wanted to see us for Christmas, but constantly comments on Facebook that she doesn’t have her reading glasses, so she couldn’t really see everything well. Now she has glasses to see the small-scale of this glasses case!
I initially wrote up a tutorial, but then when I tried to follow my own tutorial, it just didn’t make a lot of sense, so I’ll simply have to leave you with a few photos. I promise to fix up the tutorial sometime this month!
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were the last of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
The two youngest nieces were a bit of a challenge for me. I made a bag for the older one (four) for her birthday a few months ago, so didn’t want to duplicate it, and the youngest isn’t yet two, so I wanted something else appropriate for them.
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were the second of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
Boys are hard to sew for. I never know what to make. It seems like 90% of the projects out there that are age appropriate (6–10y.o.) are also very girly. But, when I came across Chez Beeper Bebe’s Nature Explorer Bag, I knew I’d found my project. In the right colors and fabrics, it’s perfectly boyish, but still useful. It’s also relatively quick and painless, which was awesome, because at Thanksgiving, Carl’s sister announced that she’s engaged and he has two boys of his own, so that upped the number of these bags to five!
Welcome back to another Vacation Christmas reveal. I was far busier over the past two months than you might have guessed based on the frequency of my posts here. Now that we’re traveling to Missouri and delivering gifts, I can show you what I’ve been working on. These were one of three types of gifts I made for the 10 nieces and nephews Carl and I have between our two families.
Over the summer, I saw the Summer Reading Bag posted on Sew Mama Sew and knew it would be a great gift. It was quick to make, simple to put together and overall seems to be a great hit. I made these bags for the five oldest nieces, who range from 4–13.
It’s Christmas week and we’re on vacation, but it’s time to unveil the finished Strip-pieced Lone Star/Star of Bethlehem quilt. You got a sneak preview last month, when I reviewed Nature’s Touch batting, so without further ado, here is the full quilt.
I’ve been waiting for snow to photograph it outside, but here we are Christmas Eve (well, when I wrote this), and Utica’s had no snow stick yet this season. So, these photos I took inside will have to do.
I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate! Here in my world, we’re gearing up to celebrate our first Christmas in our new home tomorrow, and after trying to weasel out of spending most of the day at his parents’ house, ended up volunteered to host Christmas dinner (sans oven!). We’re off on our annual end-of-the-year trip to Missouri (both Kansas City and the Lake of the Ozarks) to visit my family starting Monday. Once we get to MO, I have a full five days’ worth of present reveals scheduled to show you.
Last Sunday, Carl asked me how long it took to make a quick quilt, and I—clearly out of my mind—told him I could make his Grandma one by Christmas. So I did. She won’t receive it by Christmas, seeing as we just mailed it yesterday, but it is finished.
(…yesterday, not now) … and Carl, while frazzled shopping for Grandma at the third store and finding nothing, asked “dear, how long does it take to make a quilt”? And, I, clearly drunk from shopping all day, said “it can be shipped off by Christmas, if we shop for fabric now, don’t delay!”
Uhh, so that is how I got myself into making a quilt this week, on top of the other projects I’m working on.
This has been a pretty big year for changes—we adopted Moof back in March and now we have our new house, complete with an actual mantle in the living room! So, of course, Moof needs his own stocking to hang.
I don’t know which of us actually came up with the idea, but Carl and I were joking a few weeks ago about how Moof chews on pretty much anything, so if we got him a stocking, it’d probably be chewed up. We thought it would be funny if he had a pre-“chewed” stocking with child-like lettering.