Crafty Christmas - 5

The first sewing project I decided to complete for Christmas was an apron and oven mitt set for my niece.  This was actually one of the first things I made with the sewing machine I bought last January.  I made a calico version first, just to be sure it would work, before splurging on ultra cute fabric for the real thing.

This isn't a great photo - it's a bit grainy - but here's Anastasia wearing her apron and gloves to cook at her brand new stove.

Crafty Christmas - 4

Bunnies for my niece!  These are from Aranzi Aronzo's book Cute Dolls.  The fabric for the bunnies was leftover from making Christmas stockings, and the dresses were made from scraps from my first Christmas 2010 project: an apron and oven mitts for my niece.  I'll post photos of those once I check with her parents that I'm allowed to post photos of her online.  I forgot to take a photo of the apron and mitts by themselves, and by the time I remembered, the apron was stained with Vegemite.  My niece loves her Vegemite sandwiches!

I think the bunnies would have looked better if they'd been made with jersey cloth like the book suggests, but I was just using what I had on hand.  And the facial features do make the bunnies look like they have moustaches.  But at least my niece was able to recognise them as bunnies!

Crafty Christmas - 3

My brother and husband both like playing Angry Birds on their iPhones, so when I saw a tutorial for making plush Angry Birds, I figured this was a suitable addition to their Christmas stockings.  I made them from felt rather than fleece, because that was what I had on hand.  I think they would be easier to make from fleece - the felt, being fairly stiff, was not the easiest to hand sew (to close the opening after stuffing, and to hand sew the beak).  Still, I thought they were pretty cute, even though one has a rather crooked beak.

Crafty Christmas - 2

In my recipe folder, I have instructions on making a gingerbread house from a 1994 issue of Family Circle magazine.  A number of years ago I wanted to try making one, but I decided to try making gingerbread biscuits using the recipe first, to see how it would work out.  Since then, making gingerbread biscuits at Christmas time has been an annual tradition.  My husband has enjoyed decorating the biscuits - he goes for elaborate liquorice allsort designs whereas I'm more minimalist with silver cachous - and he's often complained that as a guy, he's not allowed to go to those gingerbread house events that many churches run for ladies around Christmas time.  So, I thought making a gingerbread house would be a nice thing for us to do together this year.  I made the pieces at home and then we put them together at my parents' place on Christmas Eve, ready to be a decoration for our family Christmas celebration there on Christmas Day.

Note the trees along one side, the red bushes along the other, the liquorice gate and the ingenious letterbox at the front - all my very creative husband's work!  I did the Freckle tiles and Smartie trim - less creative, but fun (and tasty!)  The front looked too bare, so I added the Smartie cross and turned the gingerbread house into a gingerbread church!

Crafty Christmas - 1

Some of the crafty things I made as gifts and decorations this Christmas just passed.  As usual, I was overly ambitious with my plans, and I decided to make embroidered Christmas stockings for my immediate family.  I made eight in total - for my husband, parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew-or-niece-to-be.  According to the Purl Bee, these stockings are designed to be a quick project.  Ha!  Perhaps I'm just incredibly slow (I am relatively new at sewing, and very new at this kind of embroidery), but it took me a fair while to sew each stocking, and the embroidery took me about 45 minutes per letter!  I didn't quite finish - one letter missing on my niece's stocking, several missing on mine - but oh well.  They did look nice!  Here's one of the stockings:

And here's another with the little presents I put inside:

I'm going to reuse the stockings next year - I'm not dedicated enough to make something like this every year!