Last year I got Andrew’s dad & grandfather some fishing lure for Christmas. These jigheads have a super sharp hook, so I thought it would be cute to sew up little fabric fish from scraps and safely hook these little guys into them before wrapping them up. It was something I did at the very last minute, but I think it looks so cute!
For some other ideas, I thought I would just point you in the direction of my holiday posts from last year, since I can’t really share this year’s ideas just yet.
A couple people have mentioned to me that they’ve made some of the French Chocolate Granola for gifts. I personally think food gifts are awesome.
I have to give my brother, Mark, credit this year for coming through on some excellent gift ideas for our parents. For our father, an ipod dock for his newish car. For our mother, pictures of the two of us in a cute digital picture frame.
It’s not the first time we’ve given this gift, but the last time was likely over eight (or more!) years ago. I do know that last time we used film. As we get older and into decades past our Sears portrait years, it’s really special to have these fun images of the two of us together.
My brother’s girlfriend, Jerisse, was sweet enough to do the photo shoot for us. She shot over 200 pictures and so many of them turned out really great. Last time we just set up a tripod in the forest and used a remote control. (Also, lots of fun!) We’ll have to remember to do it again sooner. It ends up being a treasured gift for all of us.
This is the linen apron that saved me.
I’ve been wanting to make a simple apron for Andrew for a while now. I came across a leftover piece of linen in my stash on December 23rd and suddenly knew exactly how I was going to make it. For the tie, I found another scrap bit of fabric. That orange print always reminded me of a vintage kitchen textile. I made a very long piece of bias tape out of it, enough to wrap around the waist twice and tie. Then I cut the piece of linen to a large rectangle, using the selvedge as the top edge. To finish the other three edges, I folded a two inch hem, then folded it in again and made mitered corners. I love the look of mitered corners and when I have some time, I’m going to make some embroidered mitered corner cloth napkins. (hmm.. great holiday gift idea for next year!) To finish off, I just lay the orange bias tape across the top, folded the pretty selvedge edge down over it and sewed the top edge. It was simple and fast and the apron is so lovely.
NOTE TO SELF: More holiday projects like this next year!
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I thought about just letting all the photographs of all the snap coin purses that I made speak for themselves. There were fifteen, a few got away before being photographed. Thing is, of course, that there are some things I’d like to share with you about the process.
I set up an assembly line to make these and tasked myself one step of the project each day. This made the project seem totally manageable and much less stress-y. Things were going really well, except for the fact that the purse frames had sold out in the shop and the new order got stuck in customs for almost 2 weeks. That really threw my short schedule out the window. The frames finally arrived on December 24 and thus I finally finished these yesterday.
I tried using cotton batting instead of interfacing and I really like how they turned out. For this style, I just cut batting to match the top piece of purse and basted it to the lining. I trimmed all the batting down in the seam allowance, once everything was sewn together. The batting adds nice body and helps fill in the metal frame more, which I quite like. One of my little typewritten labels were sewn into the lining of each of the purses.
All the fabrics were from my stash, plus scraps from various projects, skirts and dresses. I had so much fun pairing up the outside fabric with the lining fabric. After so many years of making holiday gifts, I’ve found that the best thing is to pick one thing and make many of them. Over the years, I have made stained glass night lights, hot water bottle covers, lavender & flax filled patchwork eye pillows and zippered pouches. There was no doubt that this year it had to be snap coin purses. They are the perfect gift, pretty and useful at the same time. Oh, yes, and they are fun to make!
One last thing – I learned that these types of purses are called “gamaguchi” in Japan, which means ‘frog’s mouth’. That name adds a whole other dimension to these guys.
I’m taking the downtime after the holidays to start thinking about next year’s holiday. Seriously. I hope that if I put a little pre-planning in now I’ll have a smooth sailing Christmas next year. All my presents will be made and wrapped before December 24, holidays cards will be received in the correct year and I will be fast asleep in the hours leading up to Santa’s arrival. This is how Martha does it. She has already planned and photographed the Holiday dinners we will be reading about 11 months from now. I aspire only to be on time, that’s all.
I had the last minute idea to use some fabric scraps in the last bits of my wrapping this year. I cut pieces of kraft paper and zigzag stitched a scrap of fabric to the top. Then I put the gift in the middle of two pieces of kraft paper and stitched all around to enclose it into the package. This clearly won’t work for large gifts, but for many of the small fabric gifts, it’s just perfect. I’ll probably use recycled newspapers or such next year.
I found this post yesterday on Wild Olive. Her version with painting looks really sweet and colourful. I’d love to try this too.
Sewing on paper is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. My cousin, Heather, made the beautiful holiday card below that she stitched on her machine. I really love the black and white photos of her bunnies with the red stitching. Brilliant!
One note about sewing paper on your sewing machine. You should definitely change your needle when you’re done. Sewing on paper will dull your need very quickly. Save that needle for future paper sewing projects and get a fresh one for sewing with fabric.
I also received some lovely gifts wrapped in fabric this year. One in a sweet tea towel and the other in a piece of vintage cotton. Do you have any creative wrapping ideas to share?
I did my best this year to use up fabric from my stash and scraps for my holiday gift making. These potholders were inspired a technique taught by Johanna in the Scrappy String Quilt class. I’ve also been wanting to test out the Insul-bright batting that we have in the shop, which is also supposed to be great in tea cozies, oven mitts and ironing board covers.
One side is made of strips of fabrics, pieced together. In the middle there is a layer of Insul-bright batting and a layer of cotton batting, the back is a single piece of fabric. I quilted all the layers together by stitching in the ditch between the patchwork strips.
I made several different 1″ bias tape strips to do all the trimming. If I had thought the entire project through carefully and considered the amount of time I had left myself to complete these potholders, I would have just sewn them inside out and forgone the need for trimming. Luckily, I like to take the hard road. The bias trim really frames the potholders nicely. I also decided to learn how to do continuous binding and mitred corners using Heather Bailey’s tutorial. I don’t recommend teaching yourself new tricks at 3am in the morning before Christmas Eve, but I am planning on finishing my sampler quilt in the next couple weeks and this made for very good practice.
As I mentioned in my last post, I did hit a major low point around 2am, when I realized that the potholders were taking way longer and going much slower than I had anticipated. I also worried that they would seem insignificant and silly. I was extremely tired, close to delirious. I almost started crying in frustration at the fact that I was so foolish for making gifts. (and more foolish for making them at the eleventh hour) I considered scrooging on Christmas and heading to my warm bed to sleep rather than sew. Instead, I jammed a large piece of chocolate in my mouth and switched over to a simple apron project that took me 45 minutes to complete from start to finish. The satisfaction from that little success carried me through until 5am when I finally completed the potholders and called it a well-deserved night.
In the light of day, I really love how they turned out and hopefully they will be well used in the kitchens that they have gone/are going to live in.
I’m starting to feel somewhat mellow now that the holiday race is over. Many of my gifts have not quite been completed or delivered/mailed, but the pressure of the 25th has finally past. The night of the 23rd, I stayed up until 5am trying to get a few of my handmade gifts completed on time. I’m not going to lie, at about 2am, I was cursing my crafty self and wishing I had gone out and shopped with the masses.
There are a few things I would like to note here for my future self in hopes of avoiding this possible meltdown next year.
The more pieces of fabric involved in making a gift, the more time it will take to make. Small patchwork potholders with home-made bias trim and two layers of batting are not a quick gift to be whipped up the night before giving.
Googling new sewing techniques in the middle of the night makes for a steep, pressure-filled learning curve.
Keeping a plentiful supply of chocolate on hand makes anything less painful.
Switching over to another project that is much simpler will give you the instant gratification and drive you need to get the harder projects done.
Start making holiday gifts well before December 20th! (or celebrate Christmas in mid-January)
That said, I’m really pleased with the things I made/am making. All will be revealed shortly.
Besides all the crazy delicious foods I consumed over the holiday extravaganza, my other standout highlight would be trying Rock Band 2 for the first time. Apparently, I really like to play the guitar (easy level only) and I’m not very good at the drums. I had no idea it was so fun!
