I'm a Sewing Fool

This is the year of the homemade Christmas gifts and projects and in the last month I've made:

6 unbleached muslin pillowcases. They look like real pillowcases--I was in awe! Auntie A. did a beautiful job of decorating and personalizing them using fabric markers.

2 fleece pillowcases. One extra long for a body pillow and both with plastic snaps.

1 child's jumper our of red fabric in a sturdy duck. It's a trial run for possible later jumpers in school uniform blue.


1 twin sized flannel quilt. The front has two colors of 6" squares in a checkerboard pattern. But it does have batting and backing, and a very tricky self binding which required a fair bit of work to get the pattern to come out right all the way around.

As you can see, it was a big hit--which makes all the work so worthwhile!

















1 padded fleece cat bed. The fleece is held in place with a stitched-in cat outline in the center. This will be appreciated both by the cat and her loving owner.




























1 fleece scarf. That was unbelievably easy, though, just measure and cut!

Auntie B. provided wonderful help with filling the gift box by knitting two beautiful doll-sized afghans and two child-sized scarves!

Once the box was in the mail, and Auntie A's much anticipated Christmas-themed scrub top finished, I started in on the Christmas pageant costumes. Most of the costumes the church has used the past several years mysteriously vanished so I set about to create replacement costumes for Mary, Joseph, an adult shepherd, and two of the three wisemen. (I ran out of time so the third wiseman was creatively wrapped in a long length of fabric.)

Fortunately, the childrens' angel costumes didn't disappear and we still had most of the simple child sized costumes (suitable for shepherds) I'd made a few years ago so the job wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was still a challenge, though, making 4 long robes, 3 cloaks, and several drapes, headwraps, ties and other accoutrements in just under 10 days--the family was about ready to toss my machine out in a snowbank! Well, I'm sure the OC was tempted but, instead, he cleaned and oiled my tired, complaining machine until it fairly purred. He definitely had me purring, anyway.

The pageant is over for this year but this project isn't done yet. The other night, I went out and bought a length of lovely (discounted 60%!) gold brocade to dress up one of the wise men's costumes. I'll be watching all year for on-sale fabrics that can be used to improve these costumes...and so that next year there'll be three fully and (hopefully!) beautifully costumed wise men.

But I will not be buying any more satin--no matter how beautiful and silky it may look. That stuff is horribly slippery and difficult to work with...(shudder)!

Now it's time to stop writing because Auntie A is hoping I'll get her winter-themed scrub top done very soon...and it isn't even cut out yet...