Sewing Goodies for Christmas

Well, today is 12th night, time to put all that Christmas stuff away. The Man and the Girl sorted out all the decorations on Sunday, but we still have piles of everyones booty in the living room and it really is time to put those away! (Hmm, I’m worried that that use of booty, as in bounty/treasure won’t read so well to anyone from the US). Most of the stuff is the kids of course, but I have a small pile and I realised I didn’t tell you about the amazing stuffed padda bag on it.

Back in December I signed up for the Curvy sewing collective holiday sewing swap (which has a cute little blog button that I’m darned if I can get to work). This was my first time doing something like this and I didn’t realise until I went to pick the present how nerve wrecking shopping for a total stranger would be. Also, I was paired with Katrin, which meant I had slightly less time (as my parcel had to reach Germany) and she doesn’t have a blog (yet) so I don’t even know what she looks like. Neither of these were a problem but it did make chosing slightly more nerve wracking.

Luckily we had a really helpful email exchange and I found out that she likes sewing retro style skirts and dresses. Which threw me, as I don’t think I’ve ever made anything retro and I don’t tend to wear or make skirts and dresses (I’m not counting my moss mini skirts, which I really use as a top extension so I can get away with wearing leggings outside, likewise my tunic dresses which are really long t shirts 😉 ). After a bit of pondering I decided to get her the Jenna cardigan from Muse patterns which has a retro feel and would surely go well with some retro dresses and skirts. It has a wide size range (upto 48″ bust) and it got a good review from Sophie Lee. The only down side is that the pattern is pdf, so I emailed Kat at Muse and checked she was happy for me to download it and then send it to someone else and she was fine with that, so I bought it, burned it onto a CD and printed out a little cover with the cardy illustration front.

My gift

The pattern used up nearly all of my $15USD budget, so I got a little creative to make it more interesting. (Admission time, I did buy a twin needle to go in the parcel, but I had relatives staying and it got lost somewhere in the chaos and I didn’t want to miss the last posting date for EU parcels). I dug out some retro style buttons that had come from my grandmother-in-law’s stash. There are some green rectangular ones (at the top) that I thought might work well on a cardy (but don’t tell the Boy, he’s had his eye on those) and a larger amount of grey one’s (at the bottom, they look pink in this photo but they aren’t) with a petal pattern carved (?) into them that I thought might look nice on a shirt dress (it’s so hard to pick when you don’t even know what colours someone wears). I also put 3 shiny cream (fake ivory style?) square ones with truncated corners and some groves in them, I’ve no idea what they could be used for but they were cool. Then I rudely sewed in front of my relatives and knocked up a quick bag out of scraps and using a retro ribbon from the same stash as a strap (lines with some satin binding as it had lots of floaty bits on the back).

I posted it on the last possible day, phew and then waited for my parcel. Which didn’t come. I was slightly disappointed but figured it had got delayed in the post. Then I discovered it had come and my husband had put it on one side as a surprise. So on Christmas day I got to open a parcel full of amazing stuff…

Wonderous goodies

Katrin’s clearly been reading my blog as she got me a t shirt pattern: Jaille 3132. I haven’t used any Jaille patterns before so that will be interesting and it’s nice to have another t shirt pattern to try -I don’t think I could justify paying for one when the Birgitte fits so well, but this was a gift. Plus it has a hood. (It also has nursing options but I don’t need those).

Then there was chocolate (why oh why did it not occur to me to include non sewing gifts) and some really cool steam punk postcards. Plus a beautiful zippered pouch with 3 zips, some rainbow cord and some really fun buttons that I’m sure the kids will love (but I may keep the red stars for me). I was bowled over by the amount of stuff and felt a little guilty as I think this is much more inventive that my present. I just hope Jallie patterns are cheap (don’t tell me, I’d rather not know).

So thanks to Tanya for organising this and thanks to Katrin for the amazing gift.