More Christmas Crafting

This year we made a few crafts for gifts....  I can't take credit for these as I had some great help..  The drill press make these reindeer fairly fast, except all the whittling my husband did!!!!  BTW thanks to my step-father for cleaning the garage, it was much easier to make a mess with this project)
Reindeer

Penguins

And finishing up a UFO... my step-father's birthday present (from his birthday last January 2012)

Birthday Crafts

Birthday Crafts... Yesterday I had 4 girls over for my older daughter's birthday. She wanted to do some crafts. So the first craft we did was make Sock Bunnies. It was a great success and lots of fun... most of the girls had very little experience with a needle and thread. We used cross-stitch needles with blunt tips, so there were few poked fingers. We used thisSock Bunny tutorial . The second craft we did was clipboards with paper Mod Podged onto them. It went much faster than the sock bunnies, but was very sticky!

Solstice Star Blocks

Just Takes  2 Block & Sew Happy Geek Quilt Along Block

Summer Time Sewing

At the Beach!


I am currently enjoying the beach for the summer and have brought my sewing machines with me.



We did some painting...







I frantically sewed the first week... It was kids club at church and the theme was









Some sewing for the girls... two new outfits each. The first was pink zebra print quilting cotton - this was beautiful fabric found in the $5 clearance section... it was on buy 1m get 1m free! The bodice for the dress and the peasant top are both from The Handmade Dress Miss Madeline Pattern. For each I added ribbon trim across the chest with inserted elastic. My oldest wanted a blouse and skirt, so her skirt was just gathered panels with an elastic waist -- I used my gathering foot on my serger and this went together really fast. For my youngest she wanted a dress, so onto the bodice, after only sewing one side seam, I used my serger's gathering foot and added ruffles until I got to the desired length. Both dresses were trimmed with beige eyelet, that I applied using the same gathering foot.




Their second dresses were made from some gorgeous knit fabric I picked up at the same "Buy 1m, get 2m free" So I picked up some spotted leopard print that has pink hearts in it. The knit is really nice, a good heavy weight and if it didn't have the pattern it does on it, I would make myself something with the left overs! For a pattern I used Ottobre 3/09 #29 and flared it out (and lengthened it) to make it a dress....





And some things for my son... a pair of shorts based on a pattern from 4/09 and modified to have contrast hem bands and pockets & elastic waistband. As wells as two tshirts (Ottobre 3/10 #35) - one with animal print and some solid grey & black and one made from a recycled sweater of my moms. It had some stains on the front, so she didn't want it anymore...








I spent the week helping in the craft room! Where else? We painted bags, decorated pots and made necklaces and coloured walking sticks.







We came home with some drums! These were hand painted by one of the very talent young girls at the church. She also did the paper mache animals and other decorations in the church. The whole front wall had a huge mural hanging on it, painted by a professional artist who each year paints a mural for church camp.

After a busy week with the kids at church camp, sewing them clothes, having my mom and 94yo Gram here, I then took a week offT Yesterday I started sewing again, prompted by the need of another gift! I'll post some gift sewing photos soon!

Teacher's Gifts

This year I didn't sew for our teachers, but I did some crafts with the kids. Using the idea from Appreciation 7 Days a week from Skip to My Lou. Instead of using the pill box we used craft tubes and place items and sayings into them.






We made the magnets using crayon printed ribbon & glass gems...





We made 5 tubes of supplies for the gifts. 3 teachers got the tubes with some teacher sticers, the other two teachers also received a painted box with some stickers and a pencil holder filled with pens and pencils. The pencil holder is a plastic cup with stickers and then applied mod podge.

Snowman Craft

Snowman Craft
Originally uploaded by leahholland

Snowmen, snowmen and more snowmen.....

Painted bricks with fleece scarfs...