Some small Christmas finishes

It being Christmas week, my parents came to stay overnight last night, which meant no sewing for me! Well, no sewing on the machine. I did, however, manage to stitch away on some small projects I've been meaning to finish for ages while chatting to my mum and watching reruns of Pride and Prejudice (the classic BBC version, I enjoyed it SO much!) and got all the handstitching done. An hour this morning and I had the rest sorted. And here they are!

First up, I made a lovely zippy pouch using Kat's tutorial for my childminder for Christmas. I needed a small extra to go along with her main gift, and after picking up a nice lip gloss during the week, I thought maybe a little make up bag would be nice to go with it. I loved this tutorial and its a very good size for a makeup bag. Instead of using interfacing on the outer layer, I used thin cotton batting and quilted in the linen/cotton fabric in straight lines. Then I added some handquilting on either side of the patchwork panel in the front. I really like how it looks and hope she likes it too.

I also added some handquilted stars to my Christmas stockings block which I did for the quiltalong some time back and I quilted and bound it. I'm not sure whether to hang this little mini on the wall or use as a table centre, I suppose I could do either. I did not do a good job on machine-finishing my binding, I used the wrong colour thread and it is not remotely straight. If I have the energy I may unpick and just handsew it again in front of the tv tonight, but I think that's highly unlikely and I'm not sure my kids will notice the stitch quality ;-)

Lastly, I FINALLY finished this Happy Garden embroidery piece which I've been working on for months now, a tiny bit at a time. It's actually not slow work at all, I just keep putting it down and not picking up again for 6-8 weeks. But I'm thrilled now its done - isn't it pretty? The pattern is available here if you're interested.

I found this frame in Ikea about 3 months ago and bought it specifically for this and I'm really happy with how it works with the embroidery, its got a nice natural feel. Now I need to decide where to hang it on the wall :-)

Hope you're having a lovely time getting ready for the big day. I think I'm going to sign off now for Christmas. My tonsillitis is back today with a vengence only 2 days after finishing my antibiotic course from last week :-( So I want to rest and try and get better. Hopefully this lot of antib's will do the trick!

I will be back next week with another quilt finish, my last of 2011 and I'll be checking my mails and working on stuff behind the scenes, but no more blog posts from me till after the big day and most likely I will not be doing any much blog reading either. Aside from the getting better business, I really want to focus on the kids and preparations between now and Sunday.

So I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas season and that Santa brings everything you have wished for!

Sarah xx