Only six days until christmas and amazingly there is no furious sewing in this house. Just one more gift to make and then we’re off to Grandma’s house. There are always a couple people I forget and they are always the ones ready with a gift for me. So I thought I’d make a few ornaments to keep in my bag for those awful, awkward moments. I’m sure there are people like that in your life too: the weird cousin, the super smiley coworker. I thought I’d pass on a pattern for a gingerbread man ornament that can be whipped up quickly just in case you forgot someone. Click here to download the gingerbread man pattern and instructions. I included some pictures with the instructions below as well. If you make one let me know!

materials
brown or tan wool felt
a tiny bit of white felt too
some stuffing (polyfil, etc.)
red, white, and black embroidery thread
white mini rickrack
fray check
two red buttons
glue stick

directions

1. cut out template and pin to felt. Cut out one gingerbread man out of felt.

2. for the eyes cut two small circles out of the white felt and attach them to the gingerbread man with one black french knot each. With a backstitch, sew a small circle for the mouth. Sew buttons on with white embroidery thread–to make them look like candies, sew from the button holes to the outside edge of the button. Cut pieces of mini rickrack for trim on two arms and the leg, dab all the ends with fray check, and use the glue stick to tack them down.

3. cut a rectangle as big as your gingerbread man out of felt. Pin your decorated man to this rectangle. Make a loop of rickrack and tuck it in between the layers on your gingerbread man’s head (to hang him from later). Stitch by machine or by hand from A to B (the long way) 1/8inch from the edge. Be sure to catch all the rickrack as you stitch.

4. cut off the extra felt.

5. stuff the little man lightly and sew up the opening.

6. hang him up or give him away!

It’s a cozy cozy christmas.  I didn’t mean for it to happen, but it turns out my christmas gifts have a theme this year. I guess we all have too much stuff, so now we need stuff to put our stuff in.

Crayon cozies:

A knitting needle cozy:

and a tissue cozy  (that is going to my nana who is 104!)

All the patterns were from online tutorials (this christmas season I am thankful for the internet). They can be found here, here, and here respectively.  I can see the end of my christmas list now and I am very excited.  I really didn’t know what I was getting into with the whole handmade pledge thing.  Now that I think about it I haven’t bought anything–except for some thread and notions and a couple “just in case I forgot someone gift.”  But somehow the money still gets spent: pounds and pounds of butter for cookies, wrapping paper, tape, more tape, shipping.  It was a lot of time spent sewing, which I couldn’t have done without a very supportive husband to watch the babies (and vacuum!), but I am pretty satisfied with myself.  Let’s just hope the recipients like them too.

I am halfway through this handmade holiday thing–making everyone’s gift is a lot of work.  Thankfully I have a fantastic husband who lets me hide in my studio and sew for hours.  I even got myself to the post office Monday morning before it opened (there was already a line!) and a bunch of presents are on their way! The apron above is from Denyse Schmidt’s book and has an oven mitt to match. I made a few of these set for a few sets of people–aprons for the girls and oven mitts for the boys.  I think an oven mitt makes a fine man gift. I only have a few boys on my christmas list, but I have some crafty man gifts up my sleeve, which really I should be making now that I think about it…

I had a thousand ideas for the holiday ornament swap–most were crap or required way too much work, some were pretty good but I never wrote them down, and the best ones I thought of were things I could of done if I had thought of them sooner. Ultimately, something had to be made and this is what did. Little stuffed christmas birds. They are two pieces sewn together, but the tail is sewn perpendicular to the other seam. Does that make sense? I wanted to make something stuffed, but didn’t want to sew up 10 stuffing holes (that is my least favorite part) so I left the tail open, stuffed the bird, and machine stitched the opening to look like tail feathers. Oh, this is not making sense, but whatever. Some look like christmas seals, some like christmas chickens, but at least one turned out the way I hoped. They just need their hangers (loops, string, you know) and an envelope and they can go in the very large pile that will hopefully get to the post office monday morning. If you are in group 44 (represent!) they will be on your tree soon.

click here to see all the amazing owl artists.

We’re on Thanksgiving vacation in these parts, so I’m going to keep going with theme and post about some plush trends for the next couple of days. And there is no trend bigger than the stuffed owl. Why is everyone who tries their hand at toy making compelled to make an owl? Hell, I even made a couple myself. What is it about an owl that makes people want to immortalize it with fabric and polyfil? It’s cool looking, but so are plenty of other animals and it’s not particularly soft and cuddly unlike others. Why do we find ourselves cutting out big googly eyes and little top hats to go on this beautiful bird? Who knows, but somehow every owl ends up looking completely different from the rest. Abby Glassenberg has recently added to this enormous owl family. Her owl is majestic and beautiful, just like the real bird, and somehow different from every other stuffed owl that came before it.

Just onne more bird. Happy Thanksgiving!

gobble, gobble.