Twirling around here

Yesterday's work: transforming a metre of cotton and half a metre of tulle

into a little girl's twirly skirt.

And using up the leftovers to make a matching one for her doll.

I used one eight inch width of fabric for the top tier

and two for the bottom.

I edged the hem with four wof strips of tulle netting.

The skirt is so full it stands up by itself.

My favourite three-year-old wanted a skirt to dance in

and I hope this pink and purple ballet slipper skirt

meets her requirements.

I also turned some scraps of Christmas fabrics into potholders.

I now have young adults on my Christmas list,

and they'll be getting some kitchen gifts from me this year.

I sewed more Christmas fabric scraps into gift bags

and free motioned a message onto one side with some 12 weight Aurifil thread.

Seems like I made more gift bags than Christmas gifts.

And finally, my top photos of the year on Instagram #2016bestnine.

Follow me @brendasuderman

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers.

Crazy Mom quilts

TGIFF

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Black Friday Finishes

I've got lots of finishes for this Friday.

First up is a dozen gift bags of various sizes from Christmas fabrics

for a charity sale tomorrow.

I was teaching beginner sewing again this fall,

and my students made some of these lined double drawstring bags

for the same sale.

These are the five projects one student made.

She was very proud of her tote bags and her infinity scarf, 

pictured at the bottom.

Another student was thrilled to make tag stuffies for her new granddaughter.

Here's my only quilty finish of the week:

sewing the binding on my Hillary quilt I made before the election.

Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, and I didn't vote 

and I'm not interested in having a political debate,

but I am a feminist and I made this quilt

to commemorate breaking the glass ceiling 

for women in politics.

Now I'm going to hang it in a my sewing room

as a reminder that we are better together.

My biggest finish this week: organizing/cleaning/decluttering my sewing space.

I folded and sorted all my fabric.

It may not look too neat in the picture, but its a big improvement.

And I found a few things I was missing,

including the melon template for my double wedding ring quilt,

which is now living in that plastic project box on the bottom right.

Happy long weekend to my American readers.

I'm linking up with other Friday finishers at

Crazy Mom Quilts

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

'tis the season

to get out the Christmas linens

In this case, put out a new  table runner, made from a kit I won from Mrs. Moen last winter

She sent the blocks for the houses and the black and white sashing fabric and I put the white with black dots on the roofs (which is how my house looks now, 10 days after the first snowfall here in the northern hemisphere.

 Here's the back and you can see my simple machine quilting (before I got the amazing Juki) and the red end borders and binding.

Yesterday, on the first Sunday of Advent, I got out my Christmas hangings, including this little tree one I made early in my quilting days.  I used scraps in these paper-pieced trees (I think the pattern came from a Reader's Digest Christmas book. I made a couple more for friends too). These days I would go for free-pieced trees, but I still like this one and all the handquilting on it.

I'm practicing my free-motion quilting with Christina at A Few Scraps. I'm bravely showing you the stitching on this crib-sized quilt, made of various widths of strips. We're trying different motifs in the strips.

Yes, this is fabric left from my mom's Harley quilt!



A sneak peek

I'm finally finished with Christmas gifts, and since they'll be given away tomorrow, I can show them here. My wreath square has scored a border, but isn't quilted, so I'm way ahead of the game for next year. Below is the table topper made from cross-stitched squares from the thrift shop and bordered with repro feedsack prints. The squares were $1.60, and I spent at least $35 on the fabrics, but I have lots left for more projects.

I
Last year I made three dozen pillowcases for Christmas, and one of the favourites was this lipstick print, which for some reason is 54 inches wide. I bought the rest of the bolt off the sale table, and I've been taking that 10 inch strip off the side leftover from pillowcases to make these cosmetic bags. I made at least eight, and they were fiddlier than I thought -- I machine quilted the lipsticks onto a foundation, put in a zipper, sewed the bag, sewed the lining, and handstitched the lining to the bag. There's probably an easier way. My four pre-teen nieces are each getting one of these, but I decided my aunt duties didn't extend to giving them make-up, so they're getting tissues, a nail clipper, some hand sanitizer, and two Bonnie Belle lipsmackers. I felt very retro when I bought those, since I used BB LS myself when I was a teen in the 70s. But they were huge back then, not like these little lip balm size ones. I think I had the same cherry LS for all my high school years (I didn't wear any make-up in those days).

Today my sons are tying a throw I pieced quickly for my mother-in-law, who has failing health. It's 60 by 72, and we're using polar fleece as the backing. I'm going to sew the binding on asap, and then hand sew it down on our 9 hour trip to see her. I'll be cozy in the car as we travel through the deep freeze on the Canadian prairies.

Christmas gift bags

I spent part of today making gifts bags for my family gifts, using Christmas fabrics that Belinda sent me in the scrap exchange (see post below) and some pass-along fabrics from my mother.

Here are a few of the really big ones, with clothes for my kids inside. The green one below is made from a Christmas tea towel and I just put a casing on it and sewed down the sides, using the already finished edges.

These are medium sized ones at left with books inside, the wee one has peppernut cookies in it. Below are two that fit DVDs. Most of these are machine quilted on a twill cotton backing to give them some body, but none are lined. I used odd shoelaces and ribbons for the ties.

I suppose none of these really disguise the gifts that much, but they do use up fabrics and they're reusable from year to year. I think I've started another Christmas tradition for my sons -- you can keep the gift, but you'll have to give mom the bag back.