Sorry about the (very) long post, I've been hiding these photos until the recipients received their gifts. So instead of one project on this blog, it's a few :) Enjoy!
Now that I have given out the Christmas presents that I have made for family and friends, I can finally post photos of my most recent projects! I've been dying to share them. I've been learning a lot while visiting my mom, in regards to sewing. She helped out with all the projects. Here they are:
The first Christmas present that I made was for my mother-in-law. I decided a tote bag would be best for her, with her constantly moving papers and books to and from work. I built off a canvas tote back for sturdiness and got all of my fabric from my mom's extensive stash. This tote bag probably took the most amount of time to complete. I did it almost completely alone and it involved the most sewing.
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| The tote bag that I started with. I used this for the measurements and sewed the final product onto it. |
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| The wonderful stash of pre-cut scraps that I discovered in my mom's sewing room. |
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| Planning on the left -- sewing on the right :) |
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| The finished tote! |
The second gift was for my husband's little sister. I decided on a purse for her. My mom showed me how to make it, but most of it was a bit advanced for me. That combined with my mom's impatience and the fact she loves sewing this particular style meant she did most of the sewing. I did, however, pick out and cut the fabric :D
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| Fabric and stack prep. |
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| The purse pre-buttons. I missed taking a photo of the final version! |
I also made TJ's middle sister a tote bag. It was in the same style as the purse, sewn onto canvas with lots of pockets inside and out :) I somehow skipped over getting a photo of it. Or I just haven't found the photo on my phone. I'll have to figure out what happened there.....I may have taken the photo with my mom's phone. Oops!
For my brother-in-law and his girlfriend I did a 'joint' gift, and a first for me: pillows! I've made very basic bed pillowcases that I've posted in the past, but decided to make some living room pillows this time. These I sewed almost entirely without assistance. It was my first time messing with zippers (did a hidden zipper enclosure), so my mom helped out with that part. I chose a set of patterns that I found in this book:
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| They are 18 inch pillows, and I'm sure they are quite comfy and loved :) |
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| Cat sweaters never go out of style. |
My other project over the past couple months has been digitizing all of my parents' old photo albums. I took on a task much bigger than I expected. I have literally converted thousands of photos to digital. I may not even finish this weekend before we leave--there are three albums left. It has been quite the daunting task. I'm currently trying to choose a good online backup for the photos that I can also give access to my family members without making the photos publicly available. Having them all saved just on my external hard drive makes me extremely nervous about losing all of that work. So I'm currently trying to figure out the best 'cloud' photo service to do this with. That photo scanner really came in handy, now I have all of our family's old photos, such as this:
In other news, TJ and I have been extremely busy. Talk about chaotic! I have been staying with my parents while he was doing some training for work. I visited him over Christmas and we had a mini vacation to New Orleans. That city is so beautiful. We, of course, visited the French Quarter, gambled, drank, walked around, shopped, and ate some amazing food. I tried alligator for the first time--and surprisingly liked it. I probably should have tried some while actually living in Louisiana. It tastes a lot like chicken but the texture is more moist.
We also took a trip to the Fort Walton Beach/Destin area in Florida. That's where we'll be heading next week to live. While we visited we went house shopping. Right now we are in the process of buying one of the houses we looked at on our visit. It is the third house we put an offer on, so hopefully third time is a charm! If for some reason it falls through, we are going to move into base housing and possibly house shop to purchase next year instead. I'll be away from my computer for a while as the move-in process has been a huge pain this move. The pending home purchase is not expected to close until mid-March. So, we've had to find a pet sitter for the cat and will be living out of a hotel for nearly a month. With two dogs. It'll be quite the adventure and start to our life in Florida!
The reason I did not send out Christmas cards is because of the pending move and our constantly changing living arrangements. I'll be sending out change of address cards or letters around April. So keep an eye out for one in the mail. Also, please check your Facebook messages, texts, or e-mails over the next month while I make sure my address book is up to date!
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| Here's a little tease of my current project. It is all cut and laid out. Tomorrow it'll be sewn together, then I'll be hand-quilting it on our trip! |
