Christmas Sewing 2017

In case anybody reads here anymore... Happy New Year!! ;)

Okay... so it's been an entire month since I last posted. Exactly. It's not that I've been idle! Christmas happened in there, y'know. That takes time. Plus, I did some sewing but I couldn't post about it because there were gifts involved and I didn't want to spoil any surprises!

I'll just do a quick summary instead of writing individual posts for each item. First off, I made a pair of oven mitts for Jess and Alex. They're made from an older line of Jess's canvas fabrics.

They were requested over a year ago but I didn't have time to make them for Christmas then. They were much-needed, though, to replace these...

... which were well-used, as you can see. I'd made them over 7 years ago. You can read about them here.

Here they are, each happy with their new mitt.

Next, I made a little backpack.

A VERY LITTLE backpack! See?

That also was from some of Jess's older canvas fabric which had been laminated. I made it from a tutorial you can find here. It calls for laminated fabric, likely because the inside isn't lined, so the laminate would prevent fraying of the unfinished seams. I wouldn't recommend using canvas like I did, though, because it was too stiff and thick, which made it very challenging to sew. I almost tossed it out, but then ripped off the outer part and redid it, and I'm glad I did. It turned out pretty cute, even if a bit wonky in places (which you can't see in that pic).

I also made a couple of coasters, just for fun, and as a test for what I'll show you in a bit. They were easy and very fun to make. I followed a video found here. These fabrics are from Jess's Typography line of quilting cotton from a while back.

Last but not least (because they're very handy)... but definitely the quickest and easiest, I made a couple of cord wraps.

They're made following a tutorial found here. There are two different sizes in the tutorial, and these are the small ones. The larger size would be good for appliance cords or computer cables. I used snaps instead of velcro on mine, because they're cute and just fun to install, even though the wraps are not adjustable as they would be with velcro. I also made these as a test.

The reason I was testing the coasters and cord wraps was that Courtney wanted to make some as Christmas gifts, so I wanted to make sure they were doable for her. She made all of these below. She did a great job, didn't she?

That's my wrap-up of sewing projects. I have a long list of other things I want to sew now, and I received some Christmas gifts to enable my sewing. Yay! I'll show you them soon. Plus there's something else new around here that I want to show you, too. Something beautiful! So do check back. But not too soon... you know how slow I am! LOL