Happy New Year!

 I'm off to a great start to my New Year!  Ha ha ha!  But still, at least I'm working on something!

Santa sacks

My daughter, Nicky, has recently moved into a new house and needed Christmas items so I decided to make her family Santa sacks. I found this lovely red and cream fabric range at Spotlight fairly inexpensively.

When I laid out my first piece of fabric for cutting I noticed it had cuts in it!  I was very disappointed and I was worried about the other fabrics but it turned out to just be on this piece. As I was making this pattern up as I went I cut around the cuts in the fabric and that was how I determined what size the bags would be.

These are basic lined drawstring bags.  I wanted them lined because I like the tidy look.  Once I stitched the lining and the front together I had to work out where to do the string channel.  I originally decided to do the channel 5 inches or so from the top of the bag and although I would have liked the look it's a waste of space inside the bag.  This needed to go near the top edge for maximum toy storage!

I then started making the string for the bags with leftover lining fabric.  I have these nifty turn through tools which make it easy but in the end I thought it was way too much work so I bought extra long shoe laces.

Which I tea stained!

I embroidered all the names.  This one is for another family I didn't get around to making bags for in the end.  But there's always next year ha ha!

I wanted the name tags to look like luggage tags.  I put the embroidered side and a patterned fabric right sides together and stitched them leaving a hole for turning.  When I went to turn them one of them didn't look quite like the others!  Oops!  Because I'd trimmed the corners I had to carefully resew that one.

And here is a finished bag.  I inserted the end of the laces through a buttonhole in the luggage tag.  

Four bags ready for labels.

I decided to fill one to see what it would look like.  I put a rolled up single doona (duvet/comforter) inside and there's plenty of space left in it so I'm really happy with the size!  I put it next to my fireplace to photograph and captured Minnie in the glass!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care

But I’m in no rush for St. Nicholas to be here!

We came to Australia with very few belongings and as our house in the UK hadn't sold yet we had very little money.  We moved into a rental property and shortly afterwards one of our neighbours posted a note in the mailbox advising us that the neighbourhood we'd just moved into went all out for Christmas and drew large crowds.  We had no money and no furniture but we had to decorate for Christmas?!!  In the end we bought a fake Christmas tree, threw some lights on it and sat it in the curtain less window for the crowds to "admire".  I also bought several metres of red, green and cream polycotton and made us all very basic stockings.

I replaced those six stockings when I wanted to do something to use up my scraps and orphan blocks and, over the years as the family has grown (or decreased!) I've added more stockings.  As I hung all eleven stockings yesterday my first thought was that I'm going to need a bigger fireplace in future!

I try to make each stocking different.  I guess the joy of quilting means that I'll never run out of ideas at least!  I decided that the latest two stockings would be a PLUS style and a hexagon style.  I thought that the plus design would be easier than it turned out to be.  My brain really struggled to work out what went where but it won't put me off making a plus quilt one day!

I carefully laid out the hexagon shapes and took lots of photos for reference but I still managed to sew them in the wrong orders!  

Hand stitching hexagons probably wasn't the most sensible idea to do with a dodgy hand!

I had to keep checking that I'd sewn enough hexagons to fit my pattern template.

I finished the stocking fronts and quilted them simply and then sewed them to make the finished stockings.  It's at this point when you've sewn it all together and are just about to turn through that you start to worry that you may have sewn everything in the wrong order and you'll end up with the hanger or the cuff inside the lining.  But. PHEW, I did it right.

I had a couple of helpers while I was sewing.  These beautiful greys are my dog, Minnie, and our Christmas foster, Hugh.

I also started embroidering a gift.

And framed it inside an embroidery hoop.  It's been a while since I use a hoop to frame and I messed it up several times but I got there in the end.

I'm currently working on some Santa sacks.  Let's hope I finish them before Santa starts making his way down the chimney!