Sew Close to Christmas

Did you know that there are only about forty days left till Christmas?  Yikes!  Just when you think you are starting your handmade Christmas projects early, you find out you are behind!  I'm not sure if I'm going to finish that afghan in time, seeing as how it takes three to four hours to make one square, and I'm supposed to make at least, roughly, forty squares for an afghan.  Yea…that means I'd need to make an average of one square a day.  My stats are not looking good…lol.  But, that's ok…if I don't finish it, I will come up with something else.  I'm not sweating it.  In the meantime, I still have a few other handmade presents I'd like to finish before December 25th.  Something tells me my weekends are going to get a lot more crafty…and I'm A-Ok with that!

Yesterday was my run-errands, clean-up-the-house, and bake-cupcakes day.  With my home newly cleaned and errands out of the way, I was free to let my creative juices run.  I decided to work on a project I really liked from a Sew Simple magazine I got some time last year.  The project was for handmade, quilted oven mitts.  I laid out all my materials before realizing that I needed some blue ric-rac to properly decorate the mitts.  Even though I had a minor set-back, I decided to enjoy a quick trip out of the house to pick up the materials I needed from Hancock Fabrics.  I also picked up a couple other things while I was at HF for some other gift ideas I've been working on.

When I got back from Hancock Fabrics, it was (late) lunchtime, so I decided to make a quick egg-drop soup.  I had the soup with some cherry tomatoes (leftover from the other night's swordfish dinner) and water, while browsing some other crafty magazines for gift ideas.  I also had some hot, peppermint tea and a cupcake…yummy!

After lunch, it was back to business.  I decided to make two oven mitts, so I doubled the materials, cut fabric, and machine-quilted some rectangles.

Then, I had to cut out the pattern and sew the oven mitts together.  I went slightly away from the instructions by sewing the ric-rac onto the mitt-halves and tucking in some extra ric-rac for a simple loop prior to sewing the two halves together. (The instructions said to sew the mitts together, then add the ric-rac around the outside and hand-sew the loops)

The mitts came out less than perfect, but that's what makes something handmade-special.  Right?  :)  I'm still fairly new to sewing, so I'm very happy with the results.  

I did make one pretty big error – do you see it?  I sewed the loops for the mitts on opposite sides…oopsie!  Guess I'll be fixing that later tonight.  Either way, I had fun, learned some new lessons, and I now have one Christmas present (almost) ready.  

I'm off to have a cupcake and work on some crochet while watching one of my fave shows – Cold Case!