As is our usual tradition, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve night. Which means, I can finally show the projects I’ve worked on this month. It has been several years since I did many handmade gifts and this year I made up for it. First up is the whole cloth quilt I made for our quilt group gift exchange. The color isn’t quite right on the screen — it is a red, red. The quilting designs were derived from some Hawaiian fabric.
We only exchange gifts with extended family if we are together. My sister and her family came here this year. So for her I made this Handbag. The Pattern is “The Large Angled Pocket Handbag” from Dixons Designs. (The fabric for my purse came into the store this week 
)
My sister and brother-in-law have a foster daughter who is 11 months old today. For her I made a baby doll from a “Dinky Baby” pattern. I used Doll Skin fabric rather than the craft velour called for by the pattern. I think the velour would have been easier to work with. The pattern directions come on a CD so there are loads of pictures which means the instructions are pretty easy to follow! The real baby’s first reaction to the doll was to rip off its hat and bite it on the top of the head. We think maybe she considered that a kiss. LOL.
I was cleaning out Jesse’s outgrown clothes a couple months ago and there was a large stack of T-shirts. I was ready to donate them, and it suddenly struck me I had about enough to make a T-shirt quilt. I stuck them in the closet and forgot about them. I remembered them at the beginning of the month. I bought the stabilizer for the shirts on December 4. I didn’t have as many T-shirts as I needed to make the quilt the size I wanted, but I did have the backs. So I digitized video game titles and images on 7 squares. I was clearly reminded of the fact, I dislike auto digitizing. However, I had to live with it as I didn’t have time to manually digitize and finish by Christmas. I also didn’t stitch out samples. All the embroidered blocks are the first try. The boys got out of school on December 20 and I managed to finish the binding on the 21st early in the morning. Thankfully they are fairly typical teens and slept in. There is Dr. Suess flannel on the back and wool batting. It all paid off when Jesse pulled it out of the box and proclaimed he LOVED it!
For Guy I made a turtle police car pillow from one of the blocks in Amy Bradley’s “Traveling Turtles” pattern. He had seen a picture of the pattern and asked me to buy it. He said he would make a pillow from that block if I would help him. I just saved him the trouble. I think this pattern is a hoot, and after making this am considering a whole quilt.
I made pillow cases for both Nolan and Jesse. The pattern can be found by searching either “Hot Dog Pillow case” or “Burrito Pillow Case” I used this pattern. Nolan got Converse like shoe fabric because he has a pair of bright yellow ones exactly like one shown in the print, and Jesse got cats, because he has been crazy about them for years.
Finally a new wall hanging for Guy’s office. He has two already and this is to rotate out with one of them. The Pikes Peak and Colorado Springs postcard blocks are from Olde America Antiques Vintage Quilt Blocks. The pattern comes with the blocks but is also available free from their website. I still need to hand stitch the hanging sleeve and will probably get to it today.
Whew, I should be tired just looking at this, but I’m ready to move on to the next project, or three.
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