At Last...Christmas Crafting Reveal

I can finally show you all the Christmas crafting and sewing I did.  This will be a picture heavy post and long I'm afraid.  Hang in there.

Remember these little wooden houses?  I made them from scrap wood we had in a crate in our shed from many projects.  I loved painting them and I have them in my kitchen.  I decided I wanted more.

 But I was out of scraps of wood.  So I had my hubby buy me a 2 x 4 and I cut it into the pieces I needed.  Like this:

 And I glued the triangles on the top with wood glue and let it dry overnight.

 Then I painted them to look Christmas-y and put them under my tree.  I gave some to my daughter to paint for her house.

I love these little houses.  If you want to make your own, you need to prime them and let that dry for 24 hours.  Then, it's like a blank canvas.  Most of these are 6-8 inches tall.

Now, for the sewing...

 I know I showed some of these things before, but a brief recap here if I may.  These are the TV cushions I made for the two older grandsons.

                                  I found enough castle peeps in my stash to do this.

                       The quilt I made for my son-in-law for the back of his office door.

                         The quilt for V...Still needs quilting, but soon it will be done.

 My Cherry Christmas quilt.  I used a charm pack of Cherry Christmas to make this.  It's small, but I will quilt it up and use it for decoration next year.

 These were the biggest job for me.  I cut them all out and sewed them when I had time.  It only takes me 90 minutes or so to make one now, not including the cutting and fusing.  They are phone wristlets from a pattern by Trillium designs.

 I made 6 of these babies and now, with the ones I made last summer, I have made nine!!

                                                All different, and all done!!

 I love this fabric and so I made a pillow for my sister out of it.  She loves it, as I knew she would.

                          Another print in the collection makes a fine back to the pillow.

 Here is another small quilt made from charm packs.  This one is Countdown to Christmas.  I had two of these from last year that I never used and some yardage of the green and cream stripe for the sashing.  This will also be quilted and used for next year's decor.

 Lastly, this is the quilt top for J.  I just finished it today.  Sorry for the trees shadows.  It was getting late when I took these.  After the sailing quilt and map for V, I wanted something similar, yet different for J.  Airplanes!  I found this awesome bundle of fat quarters at Fabricworm I think.  I'm sorry I don't know that was where I got them.

 And they had planes and another cool map that fit so well.  I fussed around to figure out how to best use each fabric and I even bought another half yard of the airplanes to feature it better.

I will take better pictures once it's quilted, I promise.  This is one awesome quilt, even if I didn't get it done in time for Christmas.  Thanks for sticking with me to the end.
See you soon.

A Few More Finishes

I have a few more finished things to show to you today.  Still plugging away on the Christmas list and I can't show that stuff, but I have done some other sewing.

Another little cute pair of flannel pants for baby B.  I am now making the 9-12 month sizes for him.  He is so long at almost 6 months!  I love making these little pants.  And since I am on a flannel kick, I have lots of flannel scraps...

 So I made another scrappy flannel blanket.  The first one was awesome and it is used daily in the car seat.  This one is a bit bigger, per his mother's request.  I had lots of scraps and a few bigger pieces.

 This is the back of the blanket.  It is just 2 layers of flannel, no batting and sort of quilted to prevent shifting of the layers.

Love all these crazy flannel colors and patterns.  I know it will help keep him warm this winter.  The last thing I have almost finished is the other TV cushion for my other grandson, V.

 For V's cushion I used some Castle Peeps I had in my stash.  I had just enough of the castle fabric to do both of the flat sides.  The orange piping I made from a very small piece of Kona, less than a quarter yard.

 The handle is the brown Peeps, which was small to begin with, but in putting it together, I cut off their heads.  Oh well....you can see in the picture above, the pins where I still need to stitch it closed.

A side view of the castle towers.  This cushion I also used a lining of muslin to strengthen it as I did not have home dec weight fabric.  I think this will work just as well.  Again, the tutorial can be found on Sew Can She.  It's a pretty quick sew, even if you make your own piping.

Have a great rest of the week.

Procrastination

Procrastinate-verb-to put off or defer (an action) until a later time.  Now we all know this word, and we all procrastinate at one time or another, even the best of us.  Here's another saying for you: a stitch in time saves nine.  What do these two things have in common?  Well, when there is sewing to be done, as in quilting and other creative types of sewing, we are eager to get at it.  When there is mending to be done, it goes into a pile for "later".  I had one of my husband's shirts that needed a button, and a sweater of mine that lost 2 buttons in the wash and needed reattaching.  They have been in my sewing room fer several weeks now, and while that is by no means a record, yesterday it was time to get to them.

As I was stitching the first button on the shirt, I thought 'this is taking like 5 minutes.  What was I waiting for?'  When I got to the sweater, I did the two errant buttons, but noticed 2 more loose ones, which got me to thinking about the 'stitch in time' so I gave them a reinforcing stitch as well.  All told, 15 minutes.

Where am I going with this?  Well, remember these?

Castle Peeps

1001 Peeps

Well I pulled some fabrics to piece the backs for them, and then just kept avoiding them.  Until yesterday.  After my session with the buttons, I pushed myself to get started.  At first I didn't really like the fabrics I had chosen, but I was determined to not buy any more fabric for these guys.  I started playing and stitching and I found myself getting into it.  I switched out a couple of fabrics and it was working!  This is what I came up with:

And I fussy cut some of the Peeps from each collection to applique onto the back.

I was on a roll!  So the next project is to rev up and get onto those napkins.  Yes, napkins.  My daughter is getting married in October and after seeing a couple of napkin tutorials at the Purl, she decided we should make cloth napkins.  Instead of making 100 all the same, she decided we should make sets of 4, 6 and 8 in various fabrics.  This way, after the wedding she would have plenty of reusable napkins for her home.  This was a year ago.  Plenty of time.....right?  We did a few.  Then 4 months ago we got real organized and cut them all out, bagged them according to groups, ready to hem.

Some are done.

Now I have less time in front of me so I need to get busy.  This is my big contribution to this wedding.  Here is what I have so far:

And there is one special set that will be double sided with embroidery:

So I will try not to procrastinate any further.  I need to get these done.  And those two Peeps quilts.  And my Sunkissed Squares quilt.  And I have more ideas than time  right now.  I guess I should make a list for myself.

Happy Sewing.