Endings. Projects and the year 2011

 It's December 30th and after a quick trip to a fabric store to stock up on thread at 50% off I headed off to the sewing room to finish projects.
This cute table runner is made from all of my assorted Christmas scraps. It ended up nicer than I imagined. I thought it would be a bit too busy, but it works and I will set it aside as a gift for someone next year. It is one of the designs from a pattern I used earlier call Little Charmers II (Anka's Treasures designs) . I didn't use charm squares, obviously.Went together in a flash and is as straight forward as can be.

 I also finished a purse. I've already stuffed it with my wallet and phone. Awesome purse pattern. The pattern is from Four Corners Designs and is called The X bag. Neat construction with pockets created from the bag pieces overlapping each other and sew together on the sides.
I fused decor bond interfacing to my fabric which I won't do again as it made it too stiff, although it is nice, but makes it difficult to sew through the thickness of the side and bottom seams. I will make this using quilted fabric next time.
I am in love with this fabric from Marcus fabrics.

By the way. I bought 40 spools of thread. I'm ready for 2012!

Post Holiday Rush

I'm in only one rush....to get as many projects finished and started in one week as possible and loving every minute of it. The pre-holiday craziness is exactly that for a music teacher/musician. Evenings and weekends are tumultuous between concerts and rehearsals. The kids are more than excited at school which makes for exhausting days. Once Christmas Day is over I feel a little like Gollum from Lord of the Rings as I gaze at my week long break and start reciting, "My Precious". I have made some very cool things in all the haze of December. And I will post these projects as they become finished projects.
Our Christmas tree this year was cut from our hill. This is our 5th Christmas in our new home and every year we have put up a tree that was found on the property. We love it's little imperfections, in fact it makes it perfect in our eyes.

The presents started going under the tree and I realized that I had insufficient wrapping materials this year. I am a huge blog follower and bookmarked a blog a little while ago that was about making homemade bows out of fabric. Well, it was fun and easy once I got the hang of it.

 Look at the cool fabric bows I made. I now have a use for the strips of fabric that I keep throwing in my fabric bin. I had only time to make a few of these, but I think I will make several and set them aside of future gift giving. 

A gift certificate for my mother presented me with a "how do I wrap this" challenge. It was simply a sheet of paper with information from the website that I gave her a gift certificate. In fact I had to cleverly make it look nice and print it out. I did not want to slip it into a regular business envelope so I used the same idea as the bow and made an over sized envelope out of fused fabric (like the bows). I used a yellow business envelope, gently took it apart and used it as a template. Voila! My mom loved the envelope and she is going to store things in it as it is useful and sturdy.  Perhaps old Christmas cards or pictures or it can be re-gifted for someone else.

 Well off to the races. I have mittens and quilting and sewing projects, "my precious"!