Sunday, December 15, 2013

Christmas Crafts

I decided my Christmas presents this year would be handmade as much as possible which fits just perfectly with my new job. The first major project I am undertaking is a table runner for my Grandmother. Way back when my Grandmother took a quilting class that and made one of these table runners for each of her daughters, all four of them! Yet she still didn't have a Christmas table runner for herself. Now I am definitely still new to sewing so I recruited my mom for backup when I begun working on this. Between the two of us we knocked out the squares in one day.




Just getting started! I had already decided that I wanted to make my table runner two squares longer than the original that my Grandmother made. Luckily I didn't need to cut any extra pieces as the pattern already has you buying a lot of extra fabric plus with some careful cutting I was able to get all the pieces I needed for the extra squares from what I already had sewn.
Here's a shot of my messy working station. For the record the trees gave my mom a ton of trouble. She was pinning the squares together for me but after sewing the first side of one of the trees I realized she had pinned them together wrong. We all have our weaknesses I guess. Mine is still the bobbin for the record. Everything between winding it and threading it... bobbins drive me crazy.
My first finished squares! I'm so happy with how they turned out!Laying out all the squares with my Grandma's original up above. I have since sewn them all the squares together and I'm still deciding on what I want to do for the border. Hopefully I will be able to finish this on my next day off. And down below is a sneak peek of my other Christmas projects!

Friday, December 6, 2013

Long Time No See

Getting a new job at a fabric store has been amazing but it has also taken up all my time lately. Now that Black Friday is over with, I have got a little more free time which means it's time to get started on Christmas presents! Also the employee discount allowed me to save on all my homemade projects this. Hopefully I can get everything done by Christmas! Here's my haul from today. I've already started pre-washing some of the fabric so I will post again soon once I actually start the projects!