Christmas Sewing Marathon...

OK, so here's a few pictures of things I've made recently. It's been a hectic old time as I rather rashly decided that it would be a really great idea to make lots of Christmas presents this year. What's wrong with that, you might reasonably ask. Nothing at all, I might reply, except if you've only decided with two weeks to go until Christmas! 

My sister-in-law and her husband have just built a house in the bottom of her parents' (my in-laws) garden and they are due to move in this month with any luck. I thought I'd make a nice cushion to go in their new living room and so rang my mother-in-law to see if she knew what colour scheme they were having. Dark red was the answer and so I looked about for some nice fabrics in that colour. The house is an oak-framed house and so I wanted something fairly traditional and classic - I decided upon the Rouenneries Deux range (by French General for Moda). As this was to be my first cushion (apart from the monstrosity I made in Home Economics when I was about 12), I wanted to go for something fairly simple and so naturally I went with the most time-consuming and complicated design I could find. This was a cathedral window cushion and I found a rather good pattern in the Moda Bake Shop - Charming Window Pillows. I did adapt it slightly, in that I didn't add any binding around the edges, more to save time than anything. It also didn't give any proper instructions on how to add the opening and so I had to make that up. I decided to do a banded back piece, with a semi-invisible zip between two of the three panels. It turned out rather well I thought! I wasn't able to hand it over in person and left it at my parents-in-law's house whilst we visited. My sister-in-law emailed me yesterday to tell me how utterly thrilled she was with it, so it made all the effort very worthwhile. 

The front of the cushion

Side view, showing the border a little better

The back of the cushion. The zip is between the bottom red panel and the middle panel

So, that was the 'simple' cushion I made. I also made one for my niece (daughter of the afore-mentioned sister-in-law). She is 13 and has decided that she wants her new bedroom to be black and white and grown-up. So I decided that I'd make her a cushion to match her new room and again, thought I'd keep it simple. Once again this didn't happen and I ended up making her a 3D 'F' shaped cushion. Her name is Francesca - I didn't just choose an arbitrary letter of the alphabet! There didn't seem to be any instructions on how to make such a cushion so I merrily made it up. I thought, as I was short on time, I'd also add piping (that I'd made myself - just to simplify things even more, you understand). This was extremely fiddly on the inside corners of the F - the bits between the top and bottom horizontal 'prongs'. Nevertheless, I did manage to sew it together and then stuffed it to within an inch of its life. It took over 1kg of stuffing to fill it to what I considered to be an adequate density. That's an awful lot of stuffing! Just in case anyone is interested, the fabric I used is from Makower's black and white range (the piping is the negative version of the main fabric). I used the flower version but there are all sorts of other patterns in the same range.

Here's the finished article!

The final photo I am going to show you is the sofa blanket that I made for my father-in-law. He was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months ago and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. As a result he is really feeling the cold, so I thought a nice soft blanket would be a nice present. I've made quite a few baby blankets in the last year, using smooth minky (or occasionally brushed cotton) on one side, and dimple dot minky on the other (as it is so lovely to stroke!) and decided to do the same this time, just in a much larger size. Obviously I wanted something fairly masculine and so decided on Robert Kaufman Cuddle Candy Stripes (in Tiffany/violet colourway), with a charcoal dimple dot minky on the reverse. I made it as you would expect - sewed all around the outside (leaving a gap to turn right way round again), rounding the corners off as I went, then turned right way out and top stitched the entire thing. It turned out really nice and I'm thinking of making myself one too!

Sofa blanket

 
I made the mistake of throwing out my daughters' naff Christmas stockings sometime earlier last year and only remembered as I was putting them to bed on Christmas Eve and they asked why they hadn't hung them up. Oops! Bad mummy! As a result I had to make some emergency ones - as well as wrap all three children's presents. One day I will learn to manage my time a little better! The trouble is, I am very organised when it comes to buying Christmas presents. I am normally finished by about September but this means that my brain goes into 'that's me done, no more Christmas related tasks for ME to do this year' mode and I somehow end up leaving everything like wrapping and food shopping until the last minute!

Hamlet time...

It's very almost time for our ram lambs to take their trip to 'the seaside' (wink, wink). I've been struggling to find a local abattoir slaughterhouse 'beach' to take them to but I think I may now have found one. It's such a shame that so many have had to close because of all the red tape and legislation. It means much longer journeys, more stress and quite often a much less personal service because mostly it's the bigger, more commercial ones that have been able to remain open. Our nearest one is an hour away now and, as this is our first year of sheep husbandry, I've been a little late in setting the wheels in motion. It seems that our sheep will not be able to be 'attended to' until January. I guess that means no roast lamb for Christmas dinner - so the boys can put their Hamlet cigars away (for now).

If you are not in the UK, and not of a certain age, then the Hamlet reference will make no sense to you at all, so here's a link to the YouTube video of the 1989 Hamlet cigar advert:

Hamlet Cigars - Christmas turkey ad

On the plus side,as we are having to wait a little longer before enjoying the rewards, it means we will get more meat for our money. Zwartbles sheep are a large breed and not very inclined to running to fat. This means that the longer we leave them, the more meat - and not fat - we will gain.  The breeders we bought them from just told us that one of their lambs weighed in at over 38kgs (it's usually more like 23 kgs!) at the butcher's. Good news indeed, and even more so for those family and friends that have requested a half-lamb!

I think we deserve some reward for having to rescue one or more of the boys from the fence (they just don't seem to realise that their heads shouldn't go through the mesh) almost daily since we got them! Dave has been the worst offender - I don't think he's the brightest of sheep! Someone once told me that it is the aim of every sheep to meet its Maker as soon as possible and it is the aim of every shepherd to delay this for as long as possible!

Here's a quick pic of the sheep, as I don't think I've actually put one up yet :)

The boys are the ones closest to the camera. That's Dave, centre back, nuzzling Suzy through the gate. Ellie came down to the field with me because she wanted to make a 'sheep book' for Show and Tell at school. Naturally she wanted to pose with the sheep for one of the photos!