I'm pleased to say (and as you can see from these pictures here, I'm not lying) that Sophie really enjoyed her Christmas present. There was lots of fun faces made as she pulled off and put on the ornaments. The tree itself held up fairly well too.

She still has yet to work out the buttons, but for now, the fact that the felt sticks is enough. Later on, it was enough that she could chew on the ornaments.

I must say though, that I do love her Christmas dress. It was just the right length to let her crawl around relativity unhindered and also nice and cool for the hot day. Excellent.

So you are probably all foaming at the mouth waiting anxiously for this post, and I do apologise for it's lateness. Some stuff has been going on with my own family and some super close friends that has recently made me a bit distracted (and heartbroken), so please forgive me. (That's right folks, stuff happens in my life that I don't share with the internet, it's called privacy and it can be done!)

In any case, Christmas has come and gone and I can finally share some of what I worked hard on during the year for our friends and family. This is a colour version of the sneak peak I showed back in October. Lovely bright colours! You may even recognise that red-checkered material as something I also have a skirt out of. :) 

Spread out, it looks a bit more like the picture below. A very fun table runner for Christmas. The circles are green felt (which may have begun their lives with the intention of growing up to be coasters) with red chain stitched boarders and yellow stars in the middle. The background material was a remnant I picked up at Spotlight for $2.00 a metre. Score!

I was really happy with how they turned out in the end. I did accidentally cut the wrong size material for the backing fabric, but managed to make something good out of it in the end so all is well.

Another thing I was working on (that again, I did share a sneak peak of) are some Christmas tree ornaments. These again began their lives as felt circles that had button Christmas trees sewn on (by hand) and then were backed and stuffed to give them a fun pillow-y nature.

To give each of them a personal touch, I also embroidered each persons name on the back in gold thread. I was really happy with the results.

I do have one more handmade Christmas thing to show you all, but a) this post has enough pictures, b) I've still got to give one more away (thanks to my sister and her Steve being MIA this Christmas) and c) I seem to have no photos of them anyway (in hindsight, that was a pretty silly thing for me to neglect). :P Don't kid yourselves though, it's mostly reasons A and B that are keeping me from showing you. Not C at all.

Oh, and I have some great shots of Sophie playing with (and eating) her cool Christmas tree and ornaments too! So much exciting Christmas stuff, must remember to share!!

Well everyone, here is another before-Christmas look at a Christmas present (I'm just breaking all the rules!). This groovy camouflage tent is for the Pan household and their two boys to play in. I got the material from Ikea (though I feel it is not as fluro-y as this picture makes out...) but turns out I didn't have quite enough. 

Luckily Mum came to the rescue with some kind-of-matching green that she had lying around. Otherwise, you would have been seeing some not-quite-so-matching other material that I had lying around. Seriously, as if I was going to go to Spotlight for a quarter of a meter of material. No thank you.

I love this green strip, including it's fiddly top stitching that I spent a lot of time on to make it look shiny. :) It was worth it. It makes me wish that Sophie was ready for a tent, but alas, she's not really. Maybe it can be her birthday present next year. :)

Looking forward to Christmas tomorrow so all the homemade gifts can finally be reveled! Also because Jesus was born to save us. Cool huh?

Well here is one Christmas present that can be officially shown to the world. There are perks for having kids who are too young to understand what is going on. This year, Sophie gets a felt tree (although, that's more just cos I like it) with a stack of home made felt decorations that she can put on and pull off to her hearts content.

I like to think I'm helping her gross and fine motor skills with this present, what with all the putting on and pulling off that will be happening, but who am I kidding? In all likelihood she will just try to eat the decorations. :P 

I don't know that I mind that much, despite all the hard work I put into them. I even changed the thread colors to match the decorations I was sewing. It made me wish that I knew how to use the automatic threading function that Sally has (which I only found out about in January anyway). :)

Tree idea credit goes pretty much wholely to Martina from stashmania.blogspot.com. Thank you Internet for connecting people all over the world with wonderful craftyness.

http://stashmania.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/emmas-advent-calendar.html

Heck Yeah!

This Christmas dress of Sophie's took an hour and a half on a Sunday morning and I think cost me maybe a total of $3.00. If only all of Sophie's dresses would be this great. :P

The bodice is fully lined and I made the pattern myself. The ribbon around the waist ties at the back (just in case I made it too big). That material was half price at Spotlight ($12 down to $6) then Mum got 20% off that and I only bought a half meter. So good. Ribbon was free off some random present somewhere - hording does have its upsides! Kinda wish it were thicker, but you gotta work with what you've got. 

I've been doing other things these past weeks, but I'm exhausted and lazy and have not been keeping good photographic logs of things. Sorry internet. In the theme of hand-made Christmas presents, Sophie's is the last one I'm making, but it's proving to be rather slow going, mostly because I know she doesn't really get it and won't even care if it's not done by Christmas anyway. Still, it will look great when finished, so maybe that will be my goal this week.

Completed: Block of the Month Quilt

I know this isn't photos of Steve as Aladdin, but knowing that you've waited all year for this, I'm sure it will be just as well received. That's right folks, the migraine that has been plaguing me since Monday arvo yesterday inspired me to do something productive despite it's crippling effects and thus I have finished the Block of the Month Quilt for 2013.

Here it is at Sally getting ready to sew that final strip of binding in place. Talk about hard to maneuver, and it's only a small quilt! Maybe I'll stick to baby-sized quilts in the future. Still, Sally did a remarkable job. I've discovered I'm not that great at actual quilting (which is sewing all three layers together (top, batting and backing)). Mostly, I think, because you have to go slowly, which I'm not good at. Also, I don't like shopping, so when I'm in Spotlight looking for that spray-on-adhesive stuff that you can use to help hold the layers in place and I don't find it in the first five or ten minutes, I'm much more likely just to give up and go without it (which is exactly what I did).

I did want to do more of the quilting, but it was hot and difficult and hard to get a lot done when you only have those precious nap-time moments to sew in. Oh well. I bound the quilt in some cute floral material that I picked up in a "Stash Starter" bin at Spotlight (thinking; "I've been here for too long and this will do"). It makes me feel rather accomplished to know it's done. 

I feel that the last six weeks have been a crazy blur and only now am I beginning to recover from it. Back to back visitors and then Steve and I got super sick and when you've got all that going on, the stuff that piles up in your house just piles up. You move it around, you relocate it so you have space on the table to eat, and then move it elsewhere so you've got space to play the piano, but it's just there being messy and irritating. I'm beginning to make a dent in cleaning up that crap today. 

On the other hand, I've also been sewing this week. Behold! Steve is going to his work Christmas party tonight as Aladdin. :D Full costume pictures coming soon, but in the meantime, doesn't the fez look great??