Christmas Presents 2023
Trudie’s bag
Now that the Christmas season is in the rear view mirror I can finally share with you the presents I made for my loved ones. You already saw the In Control bags that I made for my quilt buds…well, Trudie got one too. This time it was made with a couple of great sewing themed fabrics that I had in my stash. I had a great time customizing these bags for my friends and, of course, it barely made a dent in my stash! Also, I had all kinds of off-cuts and scraps of one sided fusible foam leftover from other projects that were the perfect size for this smaller bag, so I was able to use them up too.
It was so much fun making the Scandinavian woven stars last year that I knew I wanted to make more this year. This time I went with the traditional Christmas colour scheme of red and green. Our next door neighbours, who fed us tomatoes from their garden all summer, got a set, and so did Nick’s parents, Lina and Angelo. One set had darker green batiks while the other had lighter green batiks and they look very different from each other even though the reds are the same. If you plan on making some yourself, batiks work really well for this project because they hold the crease so well.
Alex’s girlfriend, Lindsay, loves pink so I made her this super cute “scrappy sewing pod” from the book Lot’s of Scraps It’s Time to Quilt that was also great for hiding a Winner’s gift card. In my stash I was able to find a sweet Tula Pink print, a coordinating leaf print to go with it, and finished it off with a “handmade” zipper pull that I purchased from Emmaline Bags.
My neighbour, Aneita, got a set of bowl cozies for heating up soup/chili in the microwave so she wouldn’t burn her hands. They are super quick to make and use up small amounts of fabric and Wrap’n’Zap (the batting material that’s safe to put in the microwave). If you want to make some yourself, all you need to do is do an online search for “bowl cozy” and lots of tutorials will pop up. You will notice that I stitched down a square in the centre of the cozy, in line with the darts…I have some of these myself and found that when laundered they really went out of shape so hopefully this will prevent that from happening. *** It is imperative that all supplies, including thread, are 100% cotton. Polyester (and other man-made fibres) will melt in the microwave and become hard and crusty.
My absolute favourite thing that I made this year was the A Place for Everything 2.0 bag by ByAnnie patterns for my daughter, Kate. Kate loves to cross stitch and is working on two large projects right now. I wanted her to have a place to put the supplies she needs for her ongoing projects and thought this bag would do the job. I love my own bag, and thought she would appreciate one too. In October I asked her to pick two or three fabrics from my stash that she really loved (that hopefully would go together) because I wanted to make her something, but I didn’t tell her what it was.
The fabrics she chose (the main outer fabric, Tula Pink’s ladybugs and a Lego print) are awesome and luckily they all coordinated really well. Other assorted bright fabrics for the pocket areas and accent strips finished it off beautifully. Again, all the rainbow hardware was purchased from Emmaline Bags and the awesome rainbow zipper was from Zipper Valley. I only made one large inner “page” pocket for the bag because I thought the centre area would be able to hold a plastic container for Kate’s embroidery floss. The day after she received it she sent me photos of it already filled with her supplies…I think it was a hit.
What projects kept you busy this past holiday season?
