January makes

I haven't got as much sewn as I usually do this month as we're doing up our kitchen and it's taking up a lot of my sewing time. I'm really hoping we're now on the home stretch with that so that I can get my kitchen put back together and also get some time in my sewing room!

Here's what I did get made this month. A starry wallhanging:

... with its embroidered label.

I had a notion to try sewing some leather things - nothing huge, maybe a coin purse (not that I have any coins these days!) or a card wallet or similar wee things like that. I found some leather off-cuts on Amazon here - I see they're out of stock as I type this but I paid all of £5.19 for a 2kg bag of bits. With free P&P, I reckoned it was a fab price to pay to do some experimental sewing. Here's a picture of the leather that came - mostly black and dark brown with some lighter brown and maroon in there too.

My first experiment was to make some letters to fit on keyrings. I made mine first then one for Douglas and one for Joanna. They were a bit fiddly to make but I was really happy with the way they turned out.

When Tilly saw Joanna's J, she wanted to bite it. Not to eat it but to just hold it. She did that once with an old leather glove of mine. She held it in her mouth for what seemed like days only dropping it to eat, drink and sleep! I decided to try another experiment and this one worked even better than the letters.

As you can see, Tilly LOVES her new bone!

I then did a bit of a re-purposing thing. I had 3 nighties that I had bought last year - or maybe it was 2020! - from Asda's. I was really disappointed with them as they were quite short - and shrunk even more after washing! I'm only 5'4" and they barely covered my behind so people taller than I am would have been displaying parts of themselves they probably would rather keep hidden! I dug the nighties out of the back of the drawer, cut off about 8" and hemmed them and I'm now wearing them as jammie tops. I'm wearing them with mismatched jammie bottoms but I reckon it's dark when I'm wearing them so that's fine!

Lastly, I was going through my "needlecrafts" folder on my computer and throwing away all sorts of stuff that I know I will never make. Boy, that was freeing! As I was doing that, I found this which I had made up all by myself years ago. 15 February, 2012 to be exact! Wow! 10 years ago! I originally drew it in Photoshop and I haven't had that on my computer for a long, long time but, luckily, the file can be used in Pixelmator which I have now.

I decided it was time to try out my design so I wrote out what each quarter of the Supernova star would be -

- and started gathering the fabrics. I took this photo when I was still in the middle of getting all the pieces ready. They're now all sitting in the four baskets - one for each quarter - and I'll hopefully get on with it soon. It'll finish at about 56" square so more a quilt than a wallhanging but, if it looks anything like my plan, I'll be very happy!

what I made in December - and a few others

Let me start by wishing you all a Happy New Year. Let's hope 2022 won't be as "strange" as 2020 and 2021!

The main part of this post is what I made in December but I'll start off with the things I made in November which I couldn't show because they were for Christmas gifts.

First of all, I made a cover for Joanna's diary. She loves Russian dolls so I used my embroidery machine to embroider the 3 dolls, her name and the year on the front and the "made by" tag on the back. I used Russian doll fabric as the pockets and the lining. Thankfully, Jo loves it!

I wanted to make a cape for Joanna but didn't have a pattern. I searched around for one to buy but didn't find one I liked but I did find a blog post here where there were instructions on how to make a cape with a piece of wool fabric and a free hood pattern. I lined the fabric and then made it up as directed but I didn't like the square corners so I rounded them off and am much happier with the result. Again, thankfully, Jo loves it!

After all that Christmas sewing, I did an easy task - adding cotton tapes to some towels for Jo.

Next I made her some more masks. I suspect that we'll be wearing them for a while yet so best to have a choice, don't you think?

I then made some new cushion covers for her. She gave me the fabric and the cushion forms so it was a really easy job to take the old covers off, measure them and make new ones out of the navy fabric.

Next I made her a cover for her unit. Lovely!

I just noticed that everything so far is for Joanna! Who knew? Not me! LOL

The next thing I made is a wallhanging of a Christmas tree. I got the pattern for this one from Jordan Fabrics - video on youtube is here. The link for the free pattern is below that video. It was an easy sew and I was surprised that I had enough whites and creams for the background. I added some red and white starry buttons as tree dex and a big yellow bell button on the top of the tree. I love it!

I was contacted by a potential tartan bee customer on Etsy asking me if it was possible to buy a stocking that faced to the right rather than to the left as all mine do. I said I could, she ordered it and so I got on with it. The customer was delighted. Yay!

Next I made some more Christmas oven gloves. I wouldn't like to say how long I've had this fabric in my stash. Let's just say that, when we moved back to Fife from Inverness in 2000, this fabric came with us!

Lastly, is a "Ho Ho Ho" banner. I had seen the banner in the Patchwork and Quilting magazine which I had got when I took a free 2 month offer of Kindle Unlimited. I think it was the December issue but I can't swear to that!

As I didn't have the templates they offered in the real life magazine, I had to figure out myself how to make the Hs and the puddings. I printed out the Hs from a font I have for my embroidery machine then I did the same with an O from that same font for the bodies of the puddings. I drew some icing shapes and cut those out of white fabric. Then I found some holly leaf fabric to cut out the leaves for the tops. I appliquéed them on to linen type fabric and sewed on red buttons for the holly berries. Then I attached them all to a piece of leftover red quilt binding. I just love it.

Well, that's the makes for December. I've no doubt I'll be sewing something in January but no idea what yet. Time will tell!