Holiday Sewing

Every year, I set lofty goals about all the handmade gifts I'm going to make for Christmas.  And every year, I start waaaayyy too late to get more than one or two done in time.  This year really wasn't all that different, but I somehow managed to crank out quite a few sewn gifts this year. Fourteen, to be exact.  Most of these were not exactly what I had planned, but that's besides the point.

In a vain attempt to give me a reason to use up my giant fabric stash, I've been on a bit of a pattern-buying spree the last few months.  I decided to use some of my more recent purchases from Bit Of Whimsy to make gifts for some of E's little friends.  As a side note, I love her patterns.  They are relatively inexpensive, very straight-forward and easy enough for beginners. 

Her newest pattern line is called Wittle Whimsys and they are small stuffed animals.  Super adorable.  I bought the elephant/mouse set and decided to make most of the younger kids I know. 

I used this as an opportunity to knock down some of my unnecessarily huge stash of flannel (from when I WAY overbought at a Black Friday sale several years ago).  Their arms and legs are made of felt.  I will say, making these tiny dolls was probably as time consuming as larger ones, mainly because there was so much cutting of tiny arms, legs, and ears involved.  I initially dreaded embroidering the faces on, and I even toyed with the idea of using buttons for the eyes instead, but then I got all paranoid about choking, plus I didn't care for how the buttons looked.  I will say though, once I got going on the embroidery, I was surprised to discover how much I enjoyed it!  It's actually making me think about taking up embroidery.  Because, you know, I don't have enough hobbies going on.  Heh.

Anyways, I also decided to make bigger Whimsy dolls for my nieces, E and a few of her closer friends.  A couple of these were ones I actually started last year (had all cut out and everything) and never finished.  Oops.  Yeah, I suck.  But better late than never, right?

Here is a big sister/little sister set:

 

Another "Butterbean" baby doll (these were incredibly fast and easy to make - definitely going to file it away in the back of my mind for a quickie gift)

Bunny dolls

 

And a couple Christmas-themed dolls

 

 

I also made a few gifts for my friends.  I originally had the brilliant idea of making hostess aprons for everyone, but I only got one done before I simply ran out of time.  I do love how this one turned out though. 

And for a few of you reading this, try to act surprised when an apron randomly shows up on your doorstep in the next month or so. ;)

One of my friends had asked me a while back to make her a simple drawstring bag to carry her knitting around in.  I decided to add a matching knitting needle roll as a bonus.

 

 

 

I have to say, I'm quite proud of how many things I managed to make, and all in the span between when we returned from our Thanksgiving trip on Dec. 1, and when we left again on Dec. 18, no less.  But next year, I'm starting in July.