Advent Gifts from me

To June

More of the goodies that I made and bagged up for the Advent Swap.

Reindeer triangle pouch - you never know what Santa might need to hide.

A Santa sack filled with gold coins - chocolate of course.

Some of the goodies together including coasters and some still in progress.

A pretty notebook cover.

A beaded chain for the scissor protectors

A small red and white crochet purse the perfect place to keep spare change.

A snowman ornament to help keep things cool for a Hot Aussie Christmas.

A special Santa Sack,

Concealing this sewing set for the final present.

The stitchery is a design from Leanne Knell of Petals and Patches, I only made the pincushion as per the instructions, the needle book and note book are my own interpretation.

It has been a very lazy week here with lots of sweet eating, reading and a little stitching.

Hope you have had time to relax and enjoy the things you love this week.

My Sewing Angel

A design by Helena Brorhed of Syverkstan.

While I planned ahead and cut and stitched, this project was fraught with set backs.

I use a water soluble pen for all my tracing but the weather has been unseasonably humid here for the past month and the design kept disappearing before I could stitch it.

Then when I had the top together my iron attacked it and I had to restitch the panel with the words - so this little hanging was not finished in time for Christmas giving. She is still part of the present and I shared it with J's mum while visiting on Christmas Eve, where I also did some hand stitching. I am happy to be done and really like the way she came together.

There is nothing wrong with Helena's pattern but as I can be a bit challenged at following the details my version is slightly different from the original design.

Wishing you a friendly Iron in the craft room.

Perfect Presents

From family

From SR this very fun book - just when I was thinking tea cosies may be on my craft list in 2012.

and fabric from SJ who thought I may need stocking up after the Christmas making frenzy.

We do like cats and we do like Coffee - Lots of fun to be had here.

Enjoy the countdown to the New Year - I have stitching planned and no day job until next week.

Advent swap Finale

The final week of gifts from June in the Advent swap

For Christmas I received this gorgeous table runner with three Christmas stitcheries.

Cute prairie points on both ends and a lovely combination of dark and bright with dark red stitching.

Just beautiful.

The week leading up to Christmas revealed these gorgeous and delicious goodies.

A pretty Christmas bowl with chocolates, a cute decorated hand towel and a pretty flannel with soap.

Hand towels for the kitchen and a hanger for a light switch.

Super cute painted raggedy which says 'Friends warm the Heart'.

Ooops, should have got the photo before all the goodies went.

Thanks June, you sure have many talents and willingly share, for the lovely gifts it was a very nice way to count down to Christmas.

Thanks to Fee for inviting me to play and for hosting this fun swap.

Hope your Christmas was full of family, friends and fun.

Advent swap fun so far

Okay so there are a lot of photo's and blogger goes backwards I am not going to try to rearrange them as I will end up losing something.

So first up these have nothing to do with the swap, but are the completed Ms Snowy and Santa whose body parts were displayed here a couple of days ago. All done ready for delivery to their new home tomorrow.

Lots of fun gifts have been received from my Advent swap partner June.

Such a nice variety of goodies have come to live at my house.

Days 14-18 saw me open packages containing a photo frame, a mug with coffee, a tree ornament and green fabric, a scissor keep which should be perfect for my big scissors, today I found two lovely appliqued tea towels in my package.

Below are some of the presents that I sent to June

This amazing little bucket came to me from June filled with scissor, buttons and thread. Perfect

Some of the other goodies include a pretty flannel with a crochet edging, pins in a tin, a Ham Bag, a sewing machine hanger, quilt hangers, Christmas napkins, notebooks, and a pin cushion pattern from Anni Downs and a seam ripper.

Very generous goodies

Thanks June.

Thanks Fee for hosting this swap, it sure is fun to open a surprise each day.

Wishing you all a wonderful week.

FNSI -

let me make enough progress on my projects that I was able to complete them after work today.

The jewellery pouches were not pictured yesterday as they were all sewn up just waiting for their ribbons.

A Christmas centrepiece made using the blocks I sewed earlier in the week.

Two more biscornu pin cushions now that I know how easy they are to make.

Four finished jewellery pouches, I even purchased a little something to put in each one.

So the snowman and Santa are incomplete but they now have stuffing and should be done in no time.

Wishing you all some time in your creative space between the celebrations.

Are you joining in?

Friday night sew in for the last time in 2011.

I am looking to make some progress on these projects -

some finishes would be nice.

So nice to sew in company. I look forward to seeing what projects every one else is working on tonight.

Thanks to Heidi and Bobbi for hosting.

Have a fabulous weekend.

Generous Friends

Another Santa has made an appearance here - he was completed during the week.

My current crochet project is more of the same - Santa and the Snowman are popular, both are from patterns found over here.

The title of this post refers to the goodies below.

I have been loaned this amazing book which contains very detailed patterns for some popular dog breeds, my kind of dogs, quiet and clean. The large bag of yarn came to me following a discussion about the lack of five ply yarns available. When a member of my craft group said 'I have some scraps can I share?' I was expecting less than half of what is there and part balls not all this, but I am planning to put it all to good use, just could take me a while.

Joining Ginny and the others in the yarn along - lots of lovely projects to drool over as always.

May your week be filled with creative moments.

Sew fest

Monday night when I got home from work I decided Nomee needed a work out - she has been taking it easy lately, just a little bit here and there.

This is serious and I had been cutting after work this past week so I had plenty of projects ready to go - well can I just say we had a very successful session and concluded with a finish and an almost finish before midnight.

As work has gotten exceptionally busy with a major deadline looming I have been spending too much time there to get very creative with Christmas presents so my five nieces will all be getting a variation on the same theme this year.

I used some of the blocks cut from the Christmas panel to make these two patchwork blocks which will become part of a bigger project.

I made this Biscornu pincushion just because the pattern was there and it looked much easier to construct than I had previously imagined - it was a breeze. Yay a finish - well it was the almost last night as I neglected the button, but I fixed that this morning first thing. I have today off to go to my craft group Christmas break up - a girls gotta get some time out for good behaviour.

Here is the first finish - a small jewellery pouch only four more to go, but three more are already started in the picture above.

All of these projects were inspired by projects in one magazine - convenient that I didn't have to shuffle. Handmade Vol28 No4 from sometime in 2010.

Best get myself sorted and make something for afternoon tea then I can sew some more.

Hope you get to share with friends this week.

Weekend wonders

Introducing Mr Frosty and Mini Brrrrr!

Same pattern the large guy is made with 8 ply yarn and a 3.75 mm hook and the little guy is made with pearl 8 thread and a 1.25 mm hook.

Another free pattern from Lion brand which is quick to make.

Today there was a little cutting and

even less sewing.

I did start the stitching on the following project but it is slow going when the attention span is short.

This list maker is one of the items included in the Advent swap package I sent.

I used the Christmas tree stitchery from the Red Brolly design and appliqued it to the tree fabric for the perfect place to make Christmas lists.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week in your creative place.