Fleece soccer ball

This fleece soccer ball was a kit. The instructions said it could be sewn by machine, but that just wasn't working for me, so I sewed all the pieces together by hand, leaving the last two seams open so that Julia could help me stuff it. We had a fun time stuffing it and wrapping it up as a surprise Christmas gift for her Papa (a soccer fan). She was pretty good at keeping the secret. I wish someone had been available to take pictures of us stuffing it.

Flannel blankets and pee pee teepees

Here are a couple of flannel blankets for baby, with pee pee teepees made with the scraps from the blankets. I hear they are handy for baby boys.

The next project Emelie had for me was to make cushion/pillows for the dinette in her newly remodeled kitchen. I made the pillow forms as well as the zipper covers. She's pleased with them.

Emelie had this fabric that she purchased for some other project but decided they would make nice placemats for more formal entertaining. The fabric wanted to fray, so I serged the edges of each piece, then layered it with batting, stitched the edges with an opening for turning, turned and then top stitched the quilting at 2" apart. The placemats are approximately 18x13".

Here are my 2018 Christmas exchange cards for my forum friends, plus a few extra for other special friends. The cross stitch Rudolphs are charts from Lucie Heaton. The machine embroidery designs are "Christmas Mylar Ornaments" from Designs by Sick. I used mylar purchased from the dollar store with a layer of organza over the top to keep the mylar from flaking. Dollar store mylar is inexpensive, but I've found it doesn't really hold up for stitching on.

These machine embroidery snowflakes will be tuck-ins with the cards.

I had this cross stitch chart from Cross Stitch Collection nearly done, so just finished it off for my friend Shirley's birthday which is just a few days before Christmas.

I don't remember where I found this towel set, but I thought it would make a perfect hooded towel for Julia's baby brother. 

 

These socks knit up quickly for Iris. Unlike the last pair of socks I knit, the heels didn't give me fits. I purposely wound the yarn so that the stripes would be mis-matched. Now I hope they fit her.

Yarn: Cascade Sock Yarn
Color: Circus
Needle Size 2
Cast on 8 stitches
Used Toe-Up Magic Loop sock pattern with Eye of Partridge heel. 
Primary stitch count 56

I knit this up quite quickly one evening. It's made with ladder yarn and a strand of black with a bit of silver in it. I cast on about 100 stitches in the round and just knit stockinette stitch for a few rows till it started to roll; cast off, and ta-da! A necklace.

Here is probably the last of our family felt Christmas stockings. This one is for Emelie's baby boy due on December 24th. Unless he is born late, this will be his first Christmas. We are ready! I don't have a name yet to put on the stocking, so that will have to be added later. 

I made these flip-page-type "books" using adorable fabric panels by Quilting Treasures called "Hungry Animal Alphabet". One page appears to have a "design element" or "learning experience", as it was sewn upside-down. Too late to do anything about it. Maybe that's what home-made is all about. There are so many elements to search for that begin with each letter, so it's also kind of an I-Spy experience. These are Christmas gifts for Sonja and Julia.

The most time-consuming part was doing the machine embroidery. I had a couple of failed attempts, and the fabric I used for the applique letters wanted to fray pretty badly, so I ended up putting a little fray-check around each capital letter. I used the Cute Critters Animal Alphabet from Designs by JuJu but wanted the two capital As to be different, so I used an A from Bunnycup Embroidery. Also, rather than use the fish on the F, I used a flamingo from Embroidery Library.

The pages are lightly quilted using a serpentine-type stitch on my sewing machine.

Merwin helped put eyelets in the corners of each page and I strung them together on a ribbon. I put glue on the bow knots, so hopefully they won't get untied!

Here's where you can see the difference in flipping the first page. 

The top one is upside-down.

This is a scarf I made using sock yarn and the linen stitch. I love the way sock yarn knits up into a less bulky scarf; and the linen stitch makes a wonderful drapey fabric that looks great on both sides. I knit it long and think I will be able to wear it in a variety of ways.

Yarn: ? Sock yarn
Needle: Size 4 US (I use larger needle than yarn suggests when using linen stitch
Stitch: Linen stitch
Cast on 31 stitches

These little gnomes are my 2018 Christmas ornaments for my grandchildren (4 if grandson is born before Christmas) and one for a friend and at least one for myself. I used a combination of these two tutorials:

 Pom Pom Gnome Ornaments: https://liagriffith.com/pom-pom-gnome-ornaments/

This tutorial is similar and has a link to the pattern I used for the hat: https://flamingotoes.com/wee-little-gnome-pom-pom-ornaments/

I used a 45mm pom pom maker and ½” wooden round balls for the noses. I used ball fringe for the hat and attached it with hot glue, then wrapped yarn around the top (to hide any hot glue peeking out), tied it in back and then tied the ends together for the hanger. I tried some free-hand embroidery on a couple of the hats, then did the rest using decorative stitching on my sewing machine.

 

 

I haven't made any lefsé cozys (for cooling lefsé) for many years. Amazingly, I was able to easily find the fabrics I still had and was able to make a couple cozies to give to a wonderful neighbor. She's always sending home-baked goodies over. I'm sure she will be making lefsé soon. We started ours this morning and will be rolling and baking on Monday and Wednesday, in time to mail to relatives for Thanksgiving (and some for us, of course). These fabrics have a Scandinavian feel, and are appliqued and quilted to two layers of cotton duck. There is another round of doubled duck cloth underneath, as lefsé is cooled between the layers. The edges are serged.

I have a coaster in the studio that I keep moving around, so I thought I'd make a second one. I had just enough small scraps from the machine covers to fussy cut the cats for these.

At Sewing Club this last Thursday, we all made Gnomes by stuffing a man's sock, adding a nose, hat and beard to make these cute Scandinavian gnomes (tomte, niesse).

      "A nisse (usually Norwegian) and a tomte (usually Swedish) are similar characters. They are both solitary, mischievous domestic sprites responsible for the protection and welfare of the farmstead and its buildings. Tomte literally means “homestead man” and is derived from the word tomt which means homestead or building lot. Nisse is derived from the name Nils which is the Scandinavian form of Nicholas."

I’ve been participating in a weekly group called Sewing Club at Pacific Fabrics in Bellevue. I am really enjoying it. The group of women is very welcoming, and the variety of projects presented is interesting. These are fabric postcards that were demonstrated for a couple of weeks. I didn’t think I’d do any, but I was inspired by them and the fact that I could mail them to Kathy while I’m in Nebraska in December (all month). One is machine embroidery and the others are quilted with pieces of fabric left over from other projects over the years. It’s great to have stash.

 

Here's one more that I made to send to 

Iris and Sonja from Nebraska. 

Maybe Julia will draw something 

on it for them.

After a lot of vacillation about what to make Sonja for her birthday, and also contemplating just giving her the felt Christmas stocking I have ready for her, I decided to put together a felt board. I had a large piece of red glittery felt and found some ideas for snowmen and owls online. It was kind of a marathon to get it all done; and I would have liked to mail it a day earlier, but it should still get there in time. I did also include the felt Christmas stocking in her package.

I didn't have quite enough yarn left for binding off the entire edge of this scarf using the picot bind off, so I grafted some yarn from the beginning tail, then had to do a regular bind off on the last few stitches. I had less than 2" of yarn left! I didn't get quite the effect I expected with this bind off, but it's fine.

These are flip-flop magnets for the laundry at Chelan. We use them to identify who is using the washer or dryer. The old ones have seen better days.

This prayer shawl was given to a friend who lost her mother at the time I was just finishing up knitting it.