Christmas thanks

I was once a teacher and understand all the hard work that goes in to caring for other people's children.  So K and I have a tradition of making small gifts for the teachers in her life.

We made twelve of these little houses for preschool teachers and some playcentre super-parents (the kind that love play and give up their time freely to get involved with our children).  We added tags and wrote our thank yous on those.

The pattern came from Kajsa Wikman's 'Scandinavian Stitches'.  I had used the same pattern two years ago to make similar gifts.

At K's Playcentre we have a fantastic supervisor who is not only an amazing teacher to the children but a font of knowledge for us as parents.  She goes way beyond what is expected of her and is adored by K.

We knew she has a thing for Christmas trees and is a bit of a crafty angel herself.  I had pinned this mini quilt from Pinterest and with K's help and an organised stash of green scraps we made this:

I used this an opportunity to practise my free motion quilting with a random doodle on the white part - I didn't even pre-mark it!  The tree was straight line quilted with a red and buttons were added as ornaments.  I also added my binding by machine sewing both sides. 

I used this book to help me with the binding...

'Quilting Modern' by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pederson is a fantastic resource for all sorts of modern quilting styles and it also has some of the best instructions I've seen on binding a quilt.  There is a technique in it that has made joining binding almost fool-proof, even without a fancy gizmo.

I've got a heap of Christmas projects to share and I'll be aiming to do so over the next few days - so beware - my catch up has started!  :-)

Clever Santa

Santa was very generous to the young lady in our family this year.  He and Mrs Claus had been busy using their scissors and sewing machines to make some pretty cool presents for K.
The biggest one was this tent:

Santa had used the pattern from Meg McElwee's ' Growing Up Sew Liberated'.

Santa had added a couple of extra features, including the clear plastic in the peeking out window.  He also added an extra piece of velcro to close the door.  Clever, clever Santa.

Santa also used the backpack pattern from 'Oliver + S Little Things to Sew' by Liesl Gibson to make a Babushka backpack.  The doll on the back is applique and pink piping was used between the front, gusset, and top and bottom backs.  Actual strapping was used but it does slip!  A great pattern - fantastic instructions and easy to make, though the denim did make it rather thick to sew at many parts.

Christmas Cheer

K and I have been busy making Christmas decorations and gifts for our house and others.  Here are some small felt gingerbread men and Christmas themed houses from 'Scandinavian Stitches' that we gave to our friends at Playcentre.

And this is what they looked like all boxed up, ready to go!

We also decided to make a cool hanging for our own place.  Using four colours of Christmas fabric, and the words typed in 'Gill Sans Ultra Bold' at 280 size and printed off.  I cut out each letter and pinned them to a doubled piece of fabric (wrong sides facing) and then sewed around it, leaving a small gap to stuff.  This was hard on my needle, but gave very good letter shape. though I did have to adapt the "I" as I wanted it to have a top and bottom.

I removed the paper, then trimmed with pinking shears, stuffed lightly, then sewed up the hole.  I hung these using baker's twine stitched along the backing.

I have also been to patchwork class recently and our lovely tutor gave us one of these each, tatted by a friend of her's.  Gorgeous!!