What I was making

I can finally share the things I made which were keeping me so busy during the past month. It sure is nice to work in my studio with the door open again!

First, there were the twelve pairs of Christmas pajamas that I made. It was crazy. Twelve is a lot. Most people got drawstring pants and a t-shirt, though TM got shorts and G. got a nightgown. The nightgown was more about how much fabric I had than a stylistic choice, though G. loves nightgowns, too. I had about 10 yards of fabric on hand, but came across about ten more yards of Christmas flannel at the thrift store. It was a shopping coup. I purchased the t-shirts on sale for $3 each. They were each embroidered with which North Pole job each person was. The other piece of the puzzle was finding embroideries with twelve different jobs. Here is Y.'s as an example. She is the Chief of Christmas Cheer.

Other jobs included Head Elf, Elf in Training, Sleigh Mechanic, Gift Wrapper, Cookie Taster, Tinsel Stylist, etc. They were pretty cute. Here is G.'s nightgown made with a mixture of fabric as I eeked out every inch.

Front and back are different.

I appliqued her job (Toy Tester) on some of the contrasting fabric to put on the nightgown.

The pajamas were certainly the biggest job, but there were some other things I made as well. Take a look at this butterfly mobile I made for H. (Who adores butterflies.)

I embroidered the butterflies on my embroidery machine using wash-away stabilizer, then just soaked them in water, and was left with just the butterflies.

I think this one is my favorite, but I love anything that is blue.

Finally, I made a few little things to go alone with a small kitchen set we gave to G. I called it "Pandy's Kitchen" (Pandy being G.'s beloved stuffed panda bear) and made Pandy some kitchen items.

That's the little kitchen.

Those two pot holders acting as hot pads were a couple of things I made, plus

an apron for Pandy.

It doesn't seem so much as I list it out here, but I have to remind myself that twelve pairs of pajamas take quite a while to put together.

The past few days we have all been relaxing and enjoying having nothing to do, but we've also been doing some other jobs that have been on the list for a while. For me, it was finally fixing this blanket. Do you see the huge gaping holes in the pink blanket? The rest of the blanket is perfectly fine, but the size of these holes make it pretty unusable.

Here's my solution.

I embroidered a design onto some soft knit fabric and then sewed it onto the blanket, catching all the frayed edges underneath.

I put a plain piece of matching fabric on the other side.

J. has been working on painting the kitchen! I'm so happy. It looks so much better even partially done.

It does highlight the bruise colored walls which are still there. The unpainted wall will be white. 

Eventually the cabinets will be white as well and I have blue glass tile for the back splash... but I'm happy to be starting with the painting.