Crafty Christmas

I have been working hard, and long, on projects for the holidays. I have declared myself finished for the season. 

Done. Finito. No more. 

Mostly likely. 

If I come up with something that can be done quickly then I will be sewing some more. Actually, I have a couple of hair bows I want to make before Christmas, but it's not a major project.

Here are the results of my hard work:

My son is loving all things Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I found a T-shirt in the bigger boys clearance section ($5) at Wal-mart and decided to use it to make a battle shell for him. I added interfacing, cut out the shape, sewed a lining to the insides, and added straps to go over his shoulders and around his waist. On the back shell I added a couple of "pockets"- to hold weapons that we don't have-and I am ok with that. All he needs are some masks and some pillow fight weapons and he will be ready for some harmless fun--Ninja style.
I hope he likes it.

I made the girl's skirt and the boy's tie for picture taking. Love it.

I made a panel skirt in holiday fabric and added an ornament embellishment to a t-shirt. So cute.

I made some more ties and some holiday bow ties for my son, as well for another kid-cousin. I turned some bow ties into hair bows for the girl. She took one of my son's bow ties and held it up to her head because she wanted to be a present and it was adorable. How could I not make her some?  

And I can't forget about the three matching golden Christmas outfits.

These are the reversible dresses I was talking about in an earlier post. They can go from Christmas to Valentine's Day.

Lovely.

I finally did add buttons to them. A word about reversible dress buttons: they are kind of awkward to sew on, and really hard to get through the button hole because of the other button behind it. But super cute still. The pattern for the dress came from the book Stitch Savvy by Deborah Moebes. The pattern ranges from xs-l. I looked on her blog to see the what sizes the ranges were actually for and lo and behold there was information on it. A welcome change from the peacoat pattern. The small can go fit a 2-5 year old and go from a dress to tunic to top. The pattern calls for ties at the shoulder line,  but I adjusted the pattern to make it more like a jumper with buttons instead of ties.

I made some leg warmers from knee socks for my girl. Some knee socks were longer than others, but I love how easy they were to make and how adorable they turned out.

The final projects were these uber-cute baby doll baskets and a round stuffed cow. I made one basket for a kid-cousin (R) and one for my girl (L). I love the pattern that Dana from MADE released. I made the medium sized baskets. The instructions were wonderful (as always with Dana's stuff) and it was a fun project. I can't wait for my girl to see hers. I hope she will love it. 

I love the pink on pink checkered fabric with the gray on gray dot fabric (all from Wal-mart). I was going to do my girls' one in different fabric but I loved the pink and gray so much I went to buy more of it. I was lucky enough to find the perfect color of gray bias tape as well.

One of the kid-cousin babies loves cows so I made her a stuffie. I hope she enjoys it. 

We also did baking and Christmas ornament crafting and teacher gift making. I didn't get many photos of that stuff because of time issues, but we had fun.

A full range of holiday craftiness. 
And I enjoyed it all.
I am 99.99% done with everything. There were some projects I didn't get around to doing but I can do them when I have more time off. All I have to do now is wait on Christmas to arrive, play Santa and put the stuff under the tree. 

That wraps it up for my Christmas crafts and sewing projects. Next year, if I have any projects, I will try to start earlier in the year, but the last minute stuff is pretty fun too.