TGIFF - Handmade Christmas 2020

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TGIFF is here in Newfoundland again this week, since there wasn't a host signed up and I have some other finishes to share 😊 There are plenty of weeks available for 2021, so go here to sign up if you'd like to host. Anja, Laura and I manage TGIFF, but we certainly can't do it without our hosts!

Last week I shared my last finish of 2020, but today I'm sharing the Christmas presents I made, plus the ones Nathan made for the family. I'll start with the ornaments I made for Nathan and Zachary. Zach got his beginner's driver's license back in February and we spent a lot of hours driving around town during the spring, especially, so his ornament is a van. This was the first time one of the boys guessed his ornament, which happened a few days before Christmas, when Zach noticed Aiden's van ornament from the year he was 16.

I was thrilled to find a pattern for a Playstation remote to do for Nathan. Video games are high on his list of favourite things, plus that was how he connected with his friends after school shut down back in March. If you want to see how I finish my cross stitch pieces into ornaments, check out this tutorial.

I used some EPP stars I already had pieced to make ornaments for my Nanny. Because I used ones I already had, they aren't specifically Christmas fabrics, but I did choose red and white ones. 

I stuffed them lightly, just enough to make them a little puffy, but not as firmly as a pillow would be. I'm hoping to write a tutorial for how I made them, but it'll be a while before I get to it, since I have to make new ones to take pictures of the process.

I made Jolly Roger Raglans (from Patterns for Pirates) for the four kids I babysit, plus one baby sister whose 6 month size shirt fit in the scraps of the others. This polar bear fabric was too cute to resist! I made three size 6, one 18 month and one 6 month.

A 6 month size sleeve cuff is no joke!

I also made shirts for my mom, using the Cachet pattern from Sinclair Patterns, which I love. I printed the pattern in Mom's size and put it together, then cut out the two shirts. Only when I went to sew the front and back together did I realize I had cut the pattern front piece on the wrong line, so it was several inches shorter than the back. Of course, that meant the two shirts I had cut out were wrong! And, also of course, I didn't have enough fabric to cut new fronts.

After stewing about it for a while, I decided to sew on a piece of the patterned fabric to make the front the right size and hope the print hid the extra seam. I think it does, well enough. That wouldn't work for the red solid. The seam would really stand out and look odd with no print to hide it. The Cachet pattern includes instructions for colour blocking, though, so I decided to colour block the red and grey together. 

Once I had the shirts finished and could laugh about it, I told my husband that I keep making these stupid cutting mistakes so I don't start feeling like I know what I'm doing!

For the past few years, Nathan has been making his gifts for the family. He came to me one evening, while he was working on mine, I think it was, and said, "You don't know what it means to me, to be able to make these gifts." I laughed and said, "Oh, yes, I do! I love making gifts, too! I totally get it." He just looked at me for a moment and then grinned before going back to his making 😊

Paul has tried off and on to learn violin, then during the pandemic he really started putting the time in to practice and follow instructions in various online tutorials, etc. so Nathan made him a cardboard violin. He realized after he had it made and wrapped that he made the roll at the top go the wrong way, but he was okay with that.

Zach has a poster on his wall with the LA Galaxy logo, so Nathan recreated that for him.

For Aiden, who is doing a Nautical Sciences program in university, Nathan drew a ship. Aiden framed it and took it to display in his room in residence 💗 Of course, I forgot to take a picture before we took him across the province, so he sent me this one.

And Nathan made me a cardboard version of my Janome 6700 sewing machine! A couple of years ago he gave me a cardboard version of the Kenmore machine I was using at the time, so he figured he should make me one of my new machine, too. He used toothpicks to make the needle and the spool pins and even coloured a space to represent the needle plate.

So that's our handmade Christmas 😊 What finishes do you have to share this week? Link them up below and then visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too.

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