The 12 Days of Christmas

A carol about over-committing on handmade gifts. Again.

12 Gift Stashbusted

I had a plan for some lovely gifts using what I had to hand. Naturally, what I have to hand is pretty good quality (never offer something to someone that you wouldn't have yourself). I was frugal, using scraps of precious fabric from many endeavours.

11 Warm Things Warming

Five traditional hot water bottles and six Hotties Microwaveable Pads with covers. I used a bunch of techniques here including regular quilting, quilt as you go, applique, fabric slashing and a variation on scrap lace. I really like how each of these came out - especially the slashed ones. You never know how they'll turn out but hopefully I'm getting better with this technique.

10 Legs A-Lounging

Four pairs of jogging bottoms (using Burda 04/2016 #138 or #139 and Burda 11/2012 #135) and one pair of sparkly pyjamas (using a draft from Metric Pattern Cutting for Menswear). All have pockets, naturally.

All the edges on the joggers are overcast with my machine, though it was painfully slow. I am beginning to consider getting myself an overlocker to speed up these kinds of projects.

9 Patches Disappearing

A long-ago promised quilt for my grandparents. The block is a Disappearing Nine Patch and it becomes wonderfully wonky the further you stray from the top left corner. This was entirely scrap/stashbusted and holds many dear bits of fabric from my entire sewing career (can you call it a career?). Without my grandparents, I wouldn't own a sewing machine so this seemed a nice way to give back in-kind.

8 Weeks of Fretting

I started the quilt really early, and finished it in good time. The warm things made steady progress and I utilised my stash or my scraps pile for all of the necessary stuff. A friend's specialist baby gift wasn't going to happen before Xmas, as the fabric was a pre-order from Z&Q, so it seemed like it wouldn't bother me for a while (and that I had freed up some sewing time). But then I began to worry that since I had a manageable workload, and was keeping up with it, that it wasn't actually enough or good enough. So my brain got me to brainstorm and plan 11 new projects to complete.

Thanks brain!

But what happened next?

7 Rounds of Laundry

I fell off the wagon. And bought a lot of new fabric for the 11 new projects. Blame Misan West and Goldbrick Fabrics  on Goldhawk Road.

And all of this needed pre-washing in secret:

(which is difficult when you're trying to hide this massive pile of fabric from B so he doesn't know how much you actually bought)

6 Things Queue Cutting

The loungewear was also the first set of items on this list of extra gift sewing. You may be able to see some of the fabrics used in the pile of the photo above. So, ahead of all my other projects, these jumped to the top of the queue to be ready in time for the Big Day.

5 Stalled Plans

I made a list of  11 extra Christmas gift projects, right? Five of them never event got started. Oh well.

4 Corners Mitred

 I really love mitreing corners.

3 Stolen Fixings

This one I forgot to get a photo of before wrapping. But I made a Messenger Bag again!

I have horrible difficulty finding nice bag fixings for my projects. I ended up stealing a slider and 2 D-rings from B for this he picked up some nice ones on holiday a few years ago.

In progress shot since I forgot to get a picture of the finished thing.

2 Miles of Thread

I've finished up a lot of spools doing all of this...

And a Workout for the Sewing Machine

Excuse me while we both rest...

K x