Christmas Gifts: Everything Else I Made

  So! It turns out that I did take a few quick pictures of the outfits I made for the daughters, late on Christmas Eve. =) I still don't have any of them wearing the outfits, since they got QUITE dirty, and it turns out I made a few mistakes.

  See that lovely velvet ribbon? I should have heat-sealed the edges on it all before I sewed it in... All of the ribbons on Booper's outfit frayed out of the seams by the end of the day. For some reason Gaiw's ribbons are still fine... most likely she just isn't as hard on her clothing yet. I also should have made Booper's vest just a bit longer, and the elastic in Gaiw's skirt a little looser. I'm really happy with how they turned out though, especially for a last-minute plan. I did decorative stitching around the hem of the skirts (That took forever! At least 25 minutes to stitch around the hem, going at full speed... and my machine can sew 850 stitches per minute!)

  The bows on the front of the skirts are attached to clips, so I can move them around if I want to, or take them off when I'm washing the outfits. I also did decorative stitching on the lower back of the vests, to close up the last little bit and to make the back more interesting. The skirts are a flat-front circle skirt with a separate waistband, and ribbon stitched into the flat front.

  The vests were originally going to be jackets, but I was just barely shy of the amount of fabric needed for the sleeves, so I just left them out. This tutorial was really helpful in figuring out how to line the vests with no raw edges and as little top-stitching as possible. The fabric is from Joann's... it was rather difficult to work with, since it was very loosely woven and it made the plaid harder to match up. It wasn't the kind of plaid I originally pictured in my head, but since I couldn't find anything even close to what I was picturing, this worked. And this plaid looked a lot better made into outfits than it did on the bolt. =)

  Even with the mistakes I made, I'm was pleasantly surprised at how well these turned out, as well as how quickly I managed to finish them. They garnered quite a few compliments when we went to visit family the day after Christmas! =)

  Something that didn't turn out so quickly was this:

  These are no-tangle zip-up ear-buds. I first saw this idea here, and I thought it was genius. However, I had to sew every little bit by hand, and the only black thread I had was really poor quality, super-tangly stuff.. Also, my zipper wasn't quite as long as I wanted, so I had to sew bias binding around half of the wires.

  This was probably the second-most difficult gift I made this year. If I were to make something like this again, I would make sure to get a super-long zipper, and I would probably choose a lighter-weight one too... polyester instead of metal.

  I still think it is a really cool idea though, even if my execution was less-than perfect.

  I mentioned that there was more to the headband gift, and that I had another small leather thing to show:

  The rest of the gift for my sister was some more hair things, two clips and two sets of cute button hairpins. The flower clip is the other little leather thing... I cut shapes and pinched them together with glue until I got them to look the way I wanted, added a circle in the center, and topped it off with seed beads. The hair bow is from some of the bias tape I made earlier this year. =)

  These were all hot-glued together, which was not super fun but was the best way I could think of  to attach them. I really love how sliding them onto pieces of printed card-stock made them look so much more professional. =)

  I made two lace watches, one for my sister, and one for my sister-in-love. I was lucky enough to pick the s-i-l's name for the gift exchange, since I had already bought the materials to make her gift. This is the sister-in-love's:

  And this one was for my sister:

  I originally bought two different colors of lace, but I loved this blue lace so much I made both watches with it. I really love both of the watches.

  I put the watches on little holders before packaging them, like this:

  I think these were my favorites of the gifts I gave this year. So pretty, simple, and feminine. =)

  I have a couple sewing-related gifts I received as well, and I am super-excited to share them with you in the next few days!

Thanks for stopping by, and be safe and have fun ringing in the New Year!