Thank you everyone who is visiting from Sew Mama Sew. And thank you to Sew Mama Sew for featuring me a few times (!) this week. It’s an honor to have my things on such a fantastic blog. If you’d like to know who’s writing this blog (me) you can click on the about link on the right. Thank you for all your kind comments. I try to reply to most, but I’m a little behind because of the holidays. Starting a blog was on my to do list for most of this (2007) year and I’m so glad to have finally crossed it off. I never would have believed that a few kind words from strangers could inspire me so much. Many of you are no longer strangers, but people I look to often for advice.  Thank you for sharing your ideas and thoughts with me. It’s a pleasure to be a part of such a creative and supportive community. I’ll need even more of that support next year because one of my resolutions is to start an etsy shop.  And sew myself some clothes that don’t suck.  Do you have any crafty resolutions for the new year?

The picture is a present I made for another sister.  I showed you the needlebook and pincushion already, but I made the sewing machine cover to match after seeing the sorry looking toaster cozy she was using to cover up her sewing machine. Just a simple lined piece of patchwork with ribbon ties on each end.  And an embroidered sewing machine so she knows where it goes (not on the toaster).

Hope you all have a happy new year!

This little bag was my present to my daughter even though I didn’t wrap it or even call it a present. Because December was so full of presents my daughter started expecting them everyday–well before christmas–and when there weren’t any she demanded More! Presents! But I still wanted to give her something. We did a lot of traveling for christmas, which if you have kids means schlepping an amazing amount of stuff around. I though it would be nice if my daughter could carry some of her own things. I followed one of the millions of tutorials on craftster (does anyone else remember when it was in it’s infancy?) for a simple bag. I’m new to making bags, not being a bag person myself, but it wasn’t all that hard really. I used a sew in interfacing, which made for a lot more cutting and sewing but I didn’t think to put it in the flap or the strap and I should have. Two year olds get frustrated easily (and all the time, ugh) so I think it’s important that the bag has some structure. I used a magnet closure thinking that it would be easy for her to use, but damn those are some strong magnets! It was filled with almost all handmade toys, which made me incredibly happy and very proud. And it meant that I didn’t have to shove even more crap in the diaper bag. She carried it the whole way.

The fabric (because a couple people have asked) is Alexander Henry and I’m not much for little kids prints, but I really like this one. And the inspiration for making the bag in the first place came from Beth at writemamawrite. She has a great list of things to pack for toddlers in that post as well, but let’s hope you have no more traveling to do–this year at least! We have one more plane ride home (home!) tomorrow and we’ll see if the excitement of “my new purse!” can last until then. Hell, I hope I last until then.

I have a few more presents to show that have been opened and (thankfully) well received.  This is a plastic bag made from many, many plastic bags.  The directions came from Esty Labs and a quick search on youtube will give you a video of the whole process.  You fuse three plastic bags together between sheets of parchment paper then zigzag them all together to make plastic fabric. I was originally going to make it in the shape of a plastic bag, but I kept melting holes in the plastic and the “fabric” was getting smaller and smaller.  There is a picture of a patchwork plastic bag in the link above, so with that in mind I cut a bunch of squares and using a paper bag for a template (how ironic) made a plastic patchwork bag.  Plastic bags are surprisingly easy to sew and this came together very quickly.  It’s incredibly light and though it doesn’t feel sturdy it can hold a bunch of stuff.  It’s hard to avoid ending up with a bunch of plastic bags these days, even if you make a special effort not to.  And this is a nice way to at least put those evil things to good use.

This was the very last gift I made and just barely done in time. It was for my brother in law and it’s the name of his band. And a large band it is. So I drew all the instruments in the band and embroidered them, then did the name in cross stitch free hand.  I got a little nervous that I wouldn’t finish in time toward the end of “flatpickers” and I think  it shows.  I’ve learned that cross stitch requires actual planning (this was my first attempt) so maybe next time I won’t just wing it.  On the whole I like how homemade it looks.  Folksy and modern–just like the band it’s for.  I wanted the hoop to be the frame, but a quick look around the internets didn’t turn up much, so I put another piece of fabric behind the embroidered bit and just cut them both to fit.  It’s pretty slippy, does anyone know how to do this properly? The gift is still within my grasp and I could fix it if need be.

Hope everyone had a very merry christmas and got at least something you wanted.

Every year my mom (hi mom) would somehow manage find a bird’s nest to put on our christmas tree. I grew up in Minnesota where there is several feet of snow and it’s ridiculously cold come christmas, so finding a bird’s nest is no small feat in December. So for the holiday traditions exchange one of the things I made was a nest. I was lucky enough to find a real nest (abandoned, of course, it’s cold here!) the very morning I was boxing up my package to send. It puts my little ruffle nest to shame, but I suppose my nest has a modern aesthetic (take that, bird).

The patchwork bit in the middle is a needlebook that I made for storing my partner’s popcorn stringing needles. We would string popcorn and cranberries most christmases, but I don’t think the popcorn string ever got all that long because, well, we would eat all the popcorn. The gingerbread man is a little stuffed ornament (I posted a pattern here and there are more I made here). We would make gingerbread men (and ladies) every year and before they would go in the oven we would give them extra legs, or no legs, two heads, six arms, basically creating an army of mutant gingerbread men that we would then cover in sprinkles and hang on the tree.

Now that I think about it, there was a lot of food on our tree growing up. I’ve always wanted to decorate my tree completely with food, not just popcorn strings and gingerbread, but gumdrop garlands and pretzel angels and marshmallow snowmen. But we have always had dogs, so half the tree would be eaten once we turn our backs. And now that we have two little kids they would pick up where the dogs left off and we’d be left with a bare tree. So maybe someday I’ll have a little tree way up high that I can decorate to my heart’s content.

That’s it. My package is somewhere between here and western australia now. I hope it (and our traditions) will be well received. I’m going to add this post to the sew mama sew Handcrafters’ Holiday meme because I’ve enjoyed reading everyone else’s posts.

Merry Christmas everyone!