Christmas Sewing

I've been working on a number of Christmas projects in the last couple of months. It sure has been fun to work on projects with specific people in mind!

I started two projects early in November - the first was a dress for my little niece, Anna.

  

I added a white ruffle at the bottom of the skirt, because it was a little short, but I - of course - forgot to take a picture.

The second was a set of Christmas place mats for my mother-in-law, Barb. I used a variety of Christmas fabrics that I had in my stash. A few were fabrics that I had made our kids' stockings out of, and a few were from my Grandma, who was the first person I knew who quilted.

Each place mat is different, and I didn't use a pattern, but tried to keep them approximately the same size by using 3.5" squares. I didn't get a picture of them all bound and finished, but they turned out pretty well, and my mother-in-law was able to use them all throughout the Christmas season!

I also made a few hot pads for my mother-in-law to give as gifts to family. Each one is made with scraps, and I had fun playing with some free motion quilting on them - they're all different!

Two weeks ago, I finally bought Made by Rae's pattern for the geranium dress, and I'm in love! So far I have made four dresses and a top, and I'm excited to make more and more! I ordered some fabric from Bari J's line, Bijoux, from Hawthorne Threads for a special project, and while I was waiting for it to ship from the East coast, I found a yard of fabric that belonged to my mom and whipped up my first dress for Audrey.

I was a little intimidated by the button holes in this dress, but I figured out how to do them on my sewing machine, and it was easy-peasy! No problem at all! 

And then, when my fabric came (they actually ship really quickly, but I'm not very patient!) I had enough extra after cutting out my patterns for a secret project, that I could also make a little geranium shirt for Audrey.

(David said this doesn't really look like Audrey, I think because she's sitting still, which doesn't happen all that often.)

It's been really fun to do all this sewing this holiday season, but I still have one more project to finish- it should be a quick and easy one though. :) Last night I finished a big project - one I can't share yet. It sure feels good to get things finished. And Audrey's excited too!

She's been sick this week, so it's good to see her smiling big like this, even though she's still a little sleepy.