Hello! And Happy 2011!

December has now come and gone. We rang in the new year recovering from the stomach flu, yay. It hit hard Christmas night and I think we've finally rounded the corner on the nasty thing. I finally got around to taking the rest of the pics of the gifts I made for Christmas and thought I'd share.

First up I made some ear warmers for my sister #1, mom, mom-in-law, and sister-in-law. I did make four but only got around to photographing two of them. These were super simple and fun to make and they look super cute. I'm definitely going to be making myself one in charcoal gray, like the one above. The fleece I had laying around and the pink waffle knit was re-purposed from a long sleeved tee. You can find the tutorial for the ear warmers here. I also made an super cute apron for sister #2, but failed to take a photo. Maybe I can get her to send me an action shot.

My husband collected nutcrackers at Christmas time as a child, so I made him a felt ornament in homage to his childhood :). I was inspired by this beautiful post by Hilary Lang.

For my two oldest I made super cute dolls from Mrs. Lang's new book. Her book is wonderful (pun not intended)! I love it and want to make everything in it. Good thing I've got lots of little kids, I should have plenty of opportunity :). I made the 'Eddie' doll for Jackson and added a super mask and cape that matched the one I made for his birthday. I love the faux fur hair! So fun. His shirt was made from one of Jackson's baby onesies and the pants from a pair of my husband's worn out cords. I used the bottom of the pants leg so that I wouldn't have to hem.

For Miss Olivia I made the 'Patchwork Penny' doll. The coordinating quilt is actually my first completed quilt! I used a piece of scrap fleece in place of batting (of which I had none on hand). I was supposed to do free motion quilting on the top but I couldn't figure out sewing with the feed dogs down so I just sewed the quilting lines as I normally would. I think it still gave the same effect. Either way I'm happy with it. The only other blunder was my misunderstanding of the directions on the yarn hair. I cut it half the length I was supposed to. So rather than cute long braids she has cute short pig tails. I didn't have any more yarn and it was Christmas Eve night when I finished her! Fortunately Olivia didn't know the difference. I already shared Henry's gift, which he loves.

All of the gifts were a hit and I reached my goal of only using things that I had on hand to make them, woohoo! Well, I did have to buy more Polyfil. But spending $2.50 on eight Christmas gifts still ain't bad :).

*With Christmas over the full realization that we're going to have baby number four in just 3 short weeks has hit! I'm hoping to get a couple sewing projects in before then, but it may be a bit quiet around these here parts for a while. We'll see what I can fit in! Hope you all have had a wonderful, healthy start to the new year!