Crafty Present Making

For Christmas 2013 I made as many presents for my friends and families as I could.

Scarves for the boys (Rowan cashsoft)
 

 

 

 

I started in November and the majority of presents were crocheted.  Not satisfied with the pressure of making so many presents, I also made snowflake Christmas decorations which were placed inside all the Christmas cards I sent.

An oven glove for mum (Rowan handknit cotton, heatproof cloth, lining)

At the start I was thinking of references to homemade Christmas jumpers and jokes about homemade knitting - not nice ones!  But as I pressed on with the gifts I took comfort in the fact that I had selected the most luxurious yarns for my gifts and if you were to purchase the same item from a store, based on the quality of materials you would probably be looking at between £20 - £50 per item.  Not only that, but when you make a gift for someone, you think of that person when you make the gift.

Dad's woolly hat (Rowan cashsoft)

One friend said that it was easier than shopping in a store, and whilst ishopping and dealing with crowds of people, traffic, busy shops, etc is stressful and it is nicer to stay home, it does take roughly a week per gift (I made all the gifts on evenings after work or during the weekend) I don't think you can compare the two scenarios.

Woolly hat for hubby (Rowan Cashsoft)

Pin cushions for my sewing bee friends (Rowan handknit cotton)

The cherry on the cake for me was when people opened the gifts.  In the words of my step brother "... what you made this scarf? I thought you bought it from a shop!  You mean you made all this with wool and a crochet hook?" Mum didn't want to use her present as an oven glove as it was too pretty so I think she's intending to use it as a tea cosy instead.  Other friends and family were less verbal but just as complimentary (and I'm including the moment when they opened the presents, the expression on their face when they saw what it was which could be positive or negative!)  I didn't tell anyone that I'd made the presents until they opened them and the label from the ball of yarn fell out with the washing instructions.

Snowflake gifts for Christmas Cards (DMC pearl cotton)

This is definitely something I will do next year, but I will start earlier as it was a bit stressful with the time pressure.  I was still finishing off the last present on Christmas eve and by the Christmas holidays I was exhausted from working by day and making presents by night for over 6 weeks.  My friends from my sewing bee also made presents and we've all vowed to start thinking about making presents in September.  I love creating and making things and am happiest crocheting away in the corner - I wouldn't have swapped it!

And after all that I'm proud to admit I only bought 3 presents, all the rest were homemade, which is really satisfying.

What presents did you make for Christmas?   

Crochet Snowflake Christmas Decorations

Just learnt to make these snowflakes from a pattern in Mollie Makes Magazine.  They are supposed to be the decoration for some gloves but I think they make great decorations for the Christmas Tree or maybe a snowflake garland.

 

 It's a treble round, and the icicle parts are 3 x chains together.  I modified the pattern to make the chain in the middle to be 6 stitch chain in between two 4 stitch chains. 

Crochet Crazy and crochet cushion covers

Craig's cushion: One side red in trebble, other side squares

 I've gone a bit crochet crazy lately.  Think it's the dark evenings that are setting it off.


To start with I've been making a crochet cushion cover for my friend Craig.  One side was fine - I managed to get to the desired 14.5" but when I got to the other side I ran out of wool.


I've just learnt to do single colour crochet squares as I'd love to have a patchwork blanket.  Craig saw these and thought they'd really work as a side to his cushion cover.


He was right, I threaded them together and it really worked.


The only hitch is I've been stitching the sides together with a double crochet stitch in navy blue and it looks lovely and neat one side, but the back side of the stitches not so neat.




I had the epiphany in a dream - yes maybe I am doing a bit too much crochet right now!


Why not edge both sides in blue double crochet stitch and then stitch the sides together - that way the good side of the double crochet will be seen on all sides.




And here it is, edged on both sides with a double crochet stitch.



I then stitched the sides together with a tapestry needle.


But just as I'd finished stitching the sides together I noticed that I'd stitched the red side back to front. Craig was visiting that evening and he actually preferred to have the underside of the squares showing, so I just turned it inside out and let Craig choose his buttons for the fastening at the bottom.


Finally, I made three crochet chains to fasten the buttons with and there you have it, the finished piece of work.



It was really nice to present it to Craig.  It's been a good few months work in the evenings after work and it is the largest crochet project I have worked on so far.


It's crazy to think I only taught myself to crochet with the help of You Tube 10 months ago.

A late present

My boyfriend's birthday was a few weeks ago.  I was trying to crochet him a woolly hat.

 I am a real beginner with crochet.  In the first week of January I decided to teach myself crochet from a book I bought with the Christmas money my stepfather gave me.  The first week was really tough.  The book was showing pictures of how you should have your hands when crocheting - well quite frankly mine did not want to crochet like that at all.  After a few days of struggling I decided to have a look at You Tube videos of people crocheting in action.  I decided not to worry about my hands but the stitches instead and then I was away with crochet.

I made a few things in my first month a mini storage box, a flower, a twisty scarf and I decided to make my boyfriend's present out of crochet.  I had no idea what to make and he said he would love a woolly hat with a pompom on the top.

Please bear in mind this was 3 days before his birthday and ordinarily this would be enough time to browse in a shop and purchase something appropriate.  But this was my first project making something as a present for my boyfriend - it had to be good!

This was also the first real project based on a round and this really challenged me.  There were a few duff starts before I was confident that what I was working would resemble what I wanted it to be. Needless to say 15 days late, I'm still working on his woolly hat but its almost finished and then I can make the pompom for the top. But as a good friend said - who gets a bespoke woolly hat these days?

Not wanting him to be without on his birthday, he had a handmade card and I baked him a chocolate cake with happy birthday candles so he was chuffed with that.

His real present (the woolly hat) is nearly finished except for the pompom - lets hope I'm not too much of a perfectionist with that bit!  Poor Matt...

Crafty Christmas Decorations

Its Christmas time and this year I'm having a stab at making a few of my own Christmas decorations.

I started with some Christmas bunting with some polyester red ribbon and some Christmas material.  I cut out lots of triangles with pinking sheers and sowed the triangles on to the ribbon on my sewing machine.

 At sewing class our teacher showed us how to do stuffed decorations with stuffing, some Christmas fabric and a little bit of ribbon.  It was so easy that I was inspired to draw my own stencils and make some more decorations for our tree.

I thought it would be nice to scent the stuffing so some have spiced apple, others have ginger bread and spiced orange.

 I was on a roll with these so I made one that can be used after Christmas is over too, scented with lavender.  Even though it wasn't with Christmas fabric it does look amazing in the tree. 

I think these would look great in all the off cut fabric you can end up with in your rag bag, maybe even a different fabric pattern on each side.

All you need to make stuffed Christmas decorations is a bag of stuffing (I got mine from Birmingham's fantastic rag market), some fabric and some ribbon.

Have fun making Christmas decorations!  I wish I'd made these with children.

Cushions for little ones

Last Christmas, mum gave me a sewing machine so I needed a first project to make with my new machine.  We have a friend who's been posted to Afghanistan on a tour of duty so we wanted to send his children Lily and Ethan something nice, so I made these. 

This one's for his little boy Ethan.  I hope he likes it and the orange spotty buttons.

This one's for his little sister Lily.  She's a crawler, soon to be a toddler and adorable.

  I hope she likes the pattern.

They're quite small so should be the perfect size for little people's chairs.  I used 15" cushions.

As I came up with the method for these myself and I found the sides next to the overlap with the button holes particularly challenging, if you have a simple pattern for cushions it would be great if you can share it with me. 

Best to their father - stay safe. x

My boyfriend's Homemade Valentine's Card

This year I decided to make my boyfriend's valentine's card instead of buying him one someone else designed.

A lot of the materials were things I found or leftovers like the jeans pocket which was in my box of bits and pieces that I like to save in case I can make something with them in the future.

The jeans pocket used to be on a skirt I no longer fitted in.  The heart a little piece of leftover fabric.  The metal "Love" piece I found on a pavement in January (you'd be surprised what little trinkets you can find dropped on pavements!)

The backing card I bought from an art shop for under a £1 (but you can get at least 3 greeting cards from 1 piece of card) and the glittery hearts I put on the inside were from a £2 pack of stickers (but I still have some left over for future projects)

I sewed on the heart and embroidered the "my" on the train to Brighton for the Seedy Sunday Seed Swap.  A few people om the train had a nose at what I was up to when I was making that.

And of course using a jeans pocket I had to pop a little present for him in the pocket.  Teamed up with a red envelope! 

He was chuffed.  It took a little while to put together but it was definitely worth it and so many little bits and bobs were upcycled - some people would even think it rubbish!!

Did you make your other half's Valentine Card this year?