More Christmas presents:)

Firstly, I finished off 3 pentagon balls for my nieces. They are pinks, blues and purples but each one is different.

I embroidered each ball with their initial

Recently when the Australian dollar was awesome I bought up some patterns from Above All Fabric. I had intended to just buy Frida but I ended up buying Sophie, Julia, Nina and Frida as well ;).

I'm really sorry to the australian sellers I know we all should support you, but I'm not paying $20-28.50 per pattern from you when I can buy the same pattern for $12.95 per pattern even with international postage on top of that its still very much cheaper, I just can't justify the difference in prices.

This is the first Frida I've made and now I love it so much I have to make more!

For my cousins little girl for Christmas I made a Frida dress and a pentagon ball using mums fabrics.

I love those little cap sleeves.

And I love the neckline.

I love the contrasting band of colour along the bottom.

I love the gorgeous little elasticised pockets and the ties under the arms.

Actually I love everything about this dress.

And the Last pentagon ball, for my cousins bub.

I tagged it explaining how the fabrics came form mums stash, made in memory of mum, for them.

This one is mostly white, orange and yellow.

All of the little kids, (mums great grandchildren) got a ball each, the older 3 teenage boys didn't of course because at their age, I really don't think they have any interest in them:) I am still making them hoodies and board shorts each. I wont see them until mid January, so I still have some time to finish those thank goodness!
Just enough time to show you my Christmas presents from my husband. A couple more Jamie books to add to my collection.

And, a gorgeous sewing box, I totally love it!

Inside it has a little tray as well as pouch and pin cushion and lot's of space for other things.

He also bought me a 1 yr mail subscription to SewHip magazine, which I totally totally love because now we don't have to deal with the crappy newsagent lady who tells us off every single time we pick up the magazine! We've never been late picking it up, we've always gotten it within a day of it being delivered to them but she lectures us and tells us off and tut tuts and looks down her nose at us about all the other people that put magazines on hold and never come to pick them up. She even laughed one time when they forgot to hold the magazine as expected and we couldn't get it.
So a Christmas sewing update and then to sleep finally! 3 hoodies and shorts to go for the boys, and something nice for my cousin, who's been ace and doesn't mind waiting until I finish all the hoodies ;)

Today I made a few tiny additions to the tiny spikey christmas tree.

I made some crocheted snowflakes using 5ply acrylic (same as the star) using this simple snowflake pattern by Sarah London.
I think they turned out pretty cute, and they took all of a few minutes to make.

I've got lot's of partly finished presents still on the go...days are running out! But last night I finally finished off a Christmas present, A pair of boxer shorts for my 14 yr old nephew.

They are elastic waisted, but also have ties (made from the fabric) threaded through the casing to tighten them up a bit more.

I used Simplicity 5314

Spikey the tiny tree & beginning to feel like christmas

Meet Spikey! This year we decided to buy a real living still growing tree. Spikey will be big one day, but for now his pot is almost bigger than he is! He is small enough we have popped him up on the table otherwise he sort of disappears if he is on the floor!

We had to race out today and buy some very small, very light-weight tinsel and baubles because the larger decorations we had would have broken and bent Spikey's tiny little branches! After decorating him we realised we had no star for the top! So I quickly crocheted up an Amigurumi star following Amy's instructions.

The little star is made from a scrap of 5 ply acrylic using a size 3.5 mm hook. (US E 4)

The crochet balls I crocheted with a mind to put on our tree earlier this Christmas preparation season have been strung up across the window next to the tree instead, else the lil tree might fall over!

I finished off another present for my little cousin in the wee hours of Saturday morning- My husband went off to bed, and I simply lost track of time while I was working on it, and the next time I looked at the clock it was 4:30am!

I made several mistakes, who wouldn't while sewing at that time of the morning! For some reason it is pulling funny in the middle of the front panel.

Inside I used the red robot print from a spotlight recent sale and rainbow from my stash (spotlight a while ago). The green bias I used is pulling funny and looks all wrinkled in the photo, but doesn't look that bad in person.

The red robot part is a zippy section we put in a box of crayons but its large enough for heaps of things. The pencil part we bought some cool triangle larger sized kids pencils because he is only just learning how to use them. The blue and white striped section we put in several thin colouring books. He also is getting the pentagon ball with the J on it.

The Last but not least bit of happy that happened yesterday, and then time for bed! My aunt and I have been sorting through some more things of mums, when we came across more of her stash - we'd thouhgt we'd found it all...but no, there are still surprises. Besides another cupboard full of fabrics, we found more plastic bags of yarn. We also found boxes full of threads, patterns, laces and zips and velcro and elastic.
I simply don't have the room here for it, so we made the decision to leave it there and as I make room in my stash I can bring some home with me.
Here are some of the goodies, two tins full - I couldn't resist bringing home yesterday.

Zips, zips and more zips, and some bias and velcro.

A reasonable sized biscuit tin full of zips and velcro and bias and some sort of stiffened mesh tape...not sure what thats for.

This tin is heavy, deep and bursting.

The heaviest biscuit tin FULL, BURSTING even, with laces. So much lace!
Mums cupboards constantly surprise me and I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Imke & some shorts

Well I'm in the middle of the Christmas Crazy!
I am attempting to now make 12 more presents in under 11 days and prepare and then cook for 17 people on the day.

Imke hoodie and some long shorts - For my nephew. (Size 10 so he can grow into them.)
Last night I stayed up late to finish One Imke hoodie from the book Sewing Clothes Kids Love for my nephew. I had cut it out earlier, so at least that part was already done. One thing I am not happy about with this books patterns, (and myself for not realising) under the section earlier in the book about cutting out it does say the patterns do not have seam allowances. Sheesh! why on earth wouldn't you include seam allowances in a pattern, what is the reason not to!

Then I decided it was a bit plain. I liked the way the book had shown the girls imke with different panels under the arms, but it was curved for girlie shaping. There was pic in the book for a boys imke with panels, but no pattern. I cut two strips from the tartan fabric i had used for the lining of the hood, and shaped them under the arm using the pattern. I overlocked and turned under the straight edge, and sewed the curved edge into the seam allowance for the sleeve and sides. I really like how it turned out.

At around about 2am for some unknown reason, it seemed like a good idea to make some shorts to go with the hoodie. I pulled out Simplicity easy to sew pattern 7043.

Photo linked to from eCrator

and cut the leg length off as long shorts from the basic pants pattern.

I stitched in a loop of the tartan into the seam so he can hang something off it if he needs or not  (whatever kids do these days;) it was mostly just to add some colour to that side of the pants.
I've also changed the pocket cutting out one in tartan one in black and stitching the tartan inside the pocket to the leg and then the black actual pocket over the top. I put a loop of tartan on the velcro to pull open the pocket, instead of the twill tape the pattern suggested.

I had to unpick the pocket a couple of times which just got me all irked up! It's still not quite right :/

BUT I finished them!
Finally I crawled into bed at 4:30am! The absolute worst thing about it is that as a result today I'm cranky, I'm tired and I'm making mistakes! So I've decided to not sew today (Monday), but to cut out shapes for my next 3 presents for my sisters twins and my cousins bub. Surely I can't go wrong cutting out pentagons!


I miss my mum everyday but coming up to Christmas it's so much worse.

Finished it Friday!

YAY! Today without the stress of potential flooding looming over us, I got into the sewing room and finished the Feliz dresses for the twins!

The front of the dresses

The back of the dresses

Good lord it has been an epic battle to get these dresses completed!
Now I need to just make 10 more christmas presents before Christmas and i'm done! EEP!

November Challenge Complete!

This Months 12 Months 12 Challenges November Challenge from Carolyn over at My Favourite was to create something Christmassy.
November Challenge completed! but only just scraping in in time!!

This afternoon I took a break from the Feliz dresses and stitched up a little something for my husband.
Apparently I NEVER make him anything, so now he can't say that anymore..but really..how hard is it to make stuff for guys in general anyway!
I had hidden away in my stash for a couple of years, a Christmas stocking panel that was in the remnants bin at Spotlight for months on end, and I finally took it home for $2.
I added the extra white length at the top from the extra fabric around it on the panel so that I could chain stitch his name on it. It's the first time I've done any chain stitch on anything! so I'm glad it worked out. I also created a facing for the top section and a hangy loop from the fabric remaining from the panel after I cut the two prints out.

Garry loves it! but now I have to find heaps of stuff to fill it, it's enormous!
So pop on over to My Favourite and check out what the others doing the 12 challenges have made this month.

I'm a Crocheter of Christmas Balls too

Well the Christmas Craziness has hit!
The air con is making clunkin noises so it wont be on today despite the sun broiling down on my very hot house and all the fans trying their hardest - I sit sweltering beneath yarn.
In preparation for Christmas tree decorating day and egged on by all the bloggers crocheting baubles, I bought a pack of 12 pretty cheap sparkly, shiny balls and I crocheted them. They rock! Crochet christmas baubles! YAY!
The first parts really easy but the pulling it over the ball is tricky on the glittery ones that the yarn likes to stick to, and on the shiny ones the top part gets slippery when you try to pull it tight. Today I often had balls launching, or squirming free of my hands, catapulting my hook to the floor!

It's a really quick little Christmassy task to do though. I completed 9 working on them on and off through the day. The other 3 from the 12 pack were not normal balls, they were spirally decorative cut-out and open inside, I wasn't going to use them, but in the end I thought they should have something handmade done to them so I worked 2 strings of CH30 wrapped around the bauble and joined at the top with slip stitches around the silver hanging loop thing.

Thanks ever so much to Pip from Meet Me at Mikes for creating the fab crochet bauble tutorial and to all the other bloggers I've been reading about lately that have been crocheting their own shiny balls this month too.

FOSAL - January and February Ornaments

My Blue Star Ornament - Submission for February for the FOSAL
I'm all finished it now! I did most of the cross-stitching while watching the winter olympics on Sunday. By Monday night  I was really glad just to be finished cross-stitching and it was quick to stitch up the backing and attach the loop on the sewing machine while watching Good News Week. Mostly it got sewn up in the ads for Good News Week, because it's hard to stitch straight while laughing. I backed it using some blue poplin and used a piece of silver cording as it's loop. I was planning to stuff it with some poly fill, but I liked it flatter so pulled all the stuffing out instead. I used 4 threads of Gutermann metallic silver thread (for sewing machine embroidery) and threaded them together to stitch all the silver cross-stitches as the metallics in the twisted strand embroidery threads were dull and looked grey rather than silver. The 4 silver threads were extremely difficult to manage and tangled easily, sometimes the back looked like an explosion of silver loops but luckily none of the loopiness knotted completely and eventually unlooped and slid through the hole! I especially like how the silver glints and reflects in the light. So here it is...
FEBRUARY Ornament ALL FINISHED:

While I was finishing off the cross stitch on the blue star, I noticed I had lot's of room in the top corner of my embroidery hoop so, to not waste the Aida cloth I stitched up a little snowman ornament to sneak in for late entry for January, (since I wasn't a part of the FOSAL in January) I found the free pattern at craftdesigns4you.com. I reinforced it with some white cotton and a green poplin backing. It was really difficult to turn right-side out and really difficult to hand-stitch up the bottom after turning. The Aida cloth really frays alot (as you can see in the photo below) and induced a decent amount of cursing.

There must be a better way to do this stuff! - Yes I'm all about the easy. Eventually I turned a blind eye to it's faults and I hand stitched it and poked it's wonky backside into submission. I used some multiples of green thread to use as a loop, because I could not work out a way to attach the silver cording nicely. So here it is... JANUARY a little wonky (don't look too closely), but ALL FINISHED:

Now, for thinking about the March ornament...I think I'll go looking for a free bauble pattern and make it up in either green and silver or purple and silver.