July 2020 Pillowcases

July pillowcases finished and mailed to Sonja and Julia.

Re-purpose t-shirt applique

This reindeer was on a shirt that got a bleach spot on it so it has reappeared as an applique on a different shirt.

Cross stitch gnomes

This is a UFO from 2018 when I finished the CCS gnomes but didn't get them made into anything. I don't usually buy kits, but the gnome cross stitch charts were in a kit for making greeting cards and I couldn't resist them. I purchased the backing board (which Merwin cut down a bit for me and re-stained) and the laser cut snowflakes and trees from Ben Franklin. I also had to make a new hanging cord which I used my great Krenik cording maker for. I had to put the knots on the front of the board to get it to hang right, but I kind of like it that way.

Growth chart for Valentin

 Little Valentin has been growing bigger and bigger as he waits for his growth chart. He just turned 2. Emelie will have to record his heights from her doctor visit reports. I'm so glad I finished it.

2020 family Christmas gifts

Here are some of my 2020 hand-crafted Christmas gifts ... I made three of these machine embroidery freestanding lace Cardinal ornaments for friends. I think I'll be making more ... and the Christmas tree for Sonja and the white dove for Iris.

A couple CCS ornaments for 
Valentin and Julia.

Knit Hat for Valentin (actually a
birthday present) to coordinate
with the monkey's hat

Sock Monkey for Valentin

Do-It-All Bins for Matthias and Anders

(filled with goodies for gifting)
from a free tutorial online

Northuldra (Frozen II) Shawl
for Julia

Cat motifs for Julia's calendar

Owls for Sonja's calendar

And, finally, a maroon bow-tie
scarf for Shirley that she requested.

Cross stitch card

 
I made this birthday card for my friend, Shirley. It is a free chart from Lesley Teare.
I also made an envelope from a calendar page. 

Lefsé cozy

Although it was probably Iris who had the most interest in learning to make lefsé this year, I made a lefsé cozy as a gift for Leslie.

Machine embroidery t-shirts

I had some t-shirt blanks that I figured I should use before my granddaughters grew out of them (especially the small ones). I thought they might like these digitized designs.

for Iris

for Julia

for Sonja

2020 Christmas cards and gift tags

These are my 2020 Christmas cards and gift tag tuck-ins to exchange with my online friends at Christmas Friends Home. The pattern for the gnome on the left is from FatCatPatterns (an applique quilting site) that I reduced in size to fit a small card. The other gnome is a machine embroidery design.

In designing the inside message, I discovered a website called remove.bg which will remove the background from an image. I think it will be very helpful in the future.

 

The gift tags reindeer faces were machine embroidery patterns intended for hair clips. I just glued them to the gift tag blanks. I may be doing more of these in the future for family gifts. They were fairly quick and easy and I liked the finished result.

 

Prayer shawl

This is another prayer shawl that I will keep in my gift closet.

Headband/Neck warmers

A friend told me about these turban headbands she has been making with leftover yarn. I thought I'd give it a try and found them practically addictive. I gave about 6 of them as gifts and have a whole wardrobe of them left for myself. I like to wear them as a neck warmer mostly, but can slip them up over my ears if I'm outside in the cold. I think I've made about 13 of these, so I'm sure some are pictured more than once here.

The tutorial I used is: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdlu9gfrL-M

Calendar envelopes

 I've seen references to making envelopes with old calendar pages, and it seems that one of my online friends has made them before. I decided to give it a try and came up with these. I self-addressed some of them for each of my granddaughters to hopefully use to send me letters, pictures, whatever. I did it years ago with Iris and I think she enjoyed it. I also gave a few to an online friend as well as keeping some for myself. The were fun to make, and it seemed like they kept turning out cuter and cuter as I cut them (late into the night).

December pillowcases

Julia's

I forgot to take pictures of the December pillowcases so had to wait for Emelie and Leslie to send me some.

These are the last of the monthly pillowcases.

Sonja's

Embellished t-shirt

Sonja's early November birthday

 brought more opportunities for crafting! 

She had requested a t-shirt like the one 

I made Iris in April. We decided her 

superpower is hugs! 

Another machine embroidery project was to make her some wood block nativity pieces. Merwin helped with cutting, sanding and staining the blocks. Most of the designs were from DesignsbyJuJu.

Lastly, her birthday card. 

She's 

recentlybeen fascinated with mushrooms, 

and this Durene Jones 

freebie 

showed up just in time.

Halloween pumpkin wall hanging

I have quite a bit of catching up to do on crafting blog posts. Here's a KreativeKiwi stacked pumpkin design that I stitched out for Halloween (on one side) and general fall decor (on the other side). These designs, as I've stated before, stitch out so nicely.

I also made myself a napkin
decoupage candle holder and another
one for Emelie.