This year I was much more ambitious with handmade Christmas gifts than I was last year! I made three different types of handmade gifts, all in multiples. The first was eight pairs of tea towels with two of my grandmother's recipes on them, in her handwriting. This gift was a long time in the making - when we visited my grandma LAST Christmas, I asked her for her cornbread and pecan crescent cookie recipes. Then I photographed them, uploaded them to Spoonflower, and followed the
Spoonflower tutorial for making family recipe tea towels. We gave them to all of the households on my mom's side of the family, and I think they were a hit - since we live far away, I didn't get to see anyone but my mom open them.
My one disappointment was that the Spoonflower fabric didn't seem to be printed on the straight grain. This is the first time I've ordered from Spoonflower, and I don't know if that's typical or if it was some sort of user error on my part, but it was a bit frustrating that I had to fudge so much when I was cutting the panels apart. In the end, I don't think it was very noticeable in the finish product, though. Once I had cut the panels apart, I used spray starch to help get crisp folds on the hem (I just folded half an inch under, and then another half inch under on all four sides, and cut little squares out of the corners to reduce bulk). I took some twill tape I found in my sewing desk and slipped it into one corner of each towel for a hanging loop.
I also made four little kid aprons for my son, my niece and nephew, and my cousin's daughter. I used
a free pattern available from Sew Liberated, which I originally saw on the
Sweet Alchemy blog. My son loves to help in the kitchen (he particularly loves baking bread), so I knew I wanted to make him an apron for Christmas. I know my niece (6) and nephew (4) also like to help in the kitchen, so I decided to make them for all the little kids we give gifts to (our 18-month-old, our niece and nephew, and my cousin's 6-year-old). My SIL loves Tula Pink fabric, so I decided this cute cut that I had in my stash was perfect for this application. I didn't have enough to make the fronts and backs of all four aprons, so I used a different fabric for the linings - blue stars for the boys, and a grey/pink floral print I had in my stash for the girls. Having different linings also helps distinguish my niece and nephew's aprons, since they're slightly different sizes.
The pattern is intended for kids age 3-6, so I made the 4-year-old's apron exactly according to the pattern. I made the two 6-year-old aprons the same width, but lengthened them by 2" at the bottom. For my 18-month-old, I folded the top edge of the pattern down by 1" and took half an inch out of the center of the apron by hanging the pattern piece 1/4" over the fold when I cut it out. I haven't seen any of the other kids in their aprons yet, but my son really loves wearing his when he helps in the kitchen - he reminds us to put it on him if we forget!
The last gifts I made this Christmas were two Open Wide zippered pouches, using
a tutorial from Noodlehead. I made the medium size, and used fabric I bought on our vacation in Hawaii just before Christmas. These were for my husband's aunt and a friend of my mother's who spent Christmas with us. They turned out really well and were easy to sew! They also turned out larger than I expected - almost big enough to carry around a sock-knitting project in. Here's a picture with a 12.5" ruler for scale.
