So, every Christmas I like to make a small mountain of stuff for my loved ones; this year was a smaller mountain than previously, mostly because I embarked upon a sorta epic making-adventure of a more selfish variety, ahem … but more about that particular project in a future post! But I did still manage to make some bits and pieces for others! btw, I was too busy to take any photos on the day, woops! but I’m hoping to get some modelled shots here sometime soon 🙂
Items 1-5; it’s always difficult to think of something for the boys, something “useful”, because boys are never just about the pretty things like girls are. Also, because I actually prefer practical and useful myself too, always. I recently discovered elbe sewing patterns through instagram, and noticed that she had very kindly made a free pattern available; the Sorrento bucket hat. Freeeee! So generous! and I thought it would be fabulous for my guys who do wear hats all the time. Craig, for one, who has been wearing the same sad shabby hat for about a decade now, ahem. Yes, since I make stuff it has indeed been a point of embarrassment, hehe ;D A hat also seemed like the perfect gift for Cassie’s man D, notoriously difficult to buy/make for. He loves fishing with a passion and was apparently in need of a new fishing hat, according to Cassie. Great timing!
Tim’s hat
I had to measure everyone’s heads… awkward! but well, I guess everyone’s used to my strange stealth-measuring attacks by now! Cassie helped me out by stealth-measuring D’s head… she said she did it while he was sleeping which made me laugh to imagine that! Fortunately he says it fits him perfectly!
D’s hat…
The boys’ hats are all made from Spotlight’s cotton drill, it’s hard to find fabrics that are both masculine and interesting, but luckily Spotlight currently has these camouflage prints in a wide range of colours. SO AMAZINGLY LUCKY!!!
Craig’s hat…
I opted to interface the brims with medium weight fusible interfacing, and they are all fully lined; Cassie’s with a stiff white cotton, the drills I used for Craig’s and Tim’s both have an olive-ish cast to them so I used an olive poplin from my stash for them, and Sam’s and D’s are both more blue-ish so for them I cut up the trouser legs off an old pair of Sam’s navy blue work trousers. It was exactly the right shade of navy blue, and also a really nice weight for lining a hat.
Sam’s hat…
And I found this old label in my notions basket! the very last one! leftover from when I used to sew their names in their school uniforms! I had a little giggle putting this in, and Sam too when he saw it in there on Christmas morning.
Cassie’s hat…
I also made one for Cassie using some of the leftover fabric from her Christmas dress for this year… more on that later! Cassie’s floral linen is very lightweight compared to the cotton drill that I used for the boys’ hats, so I fully interfaced all the pieces in this one, including the lining, with medium weight fusible interfacing.
This is a free pattern so obviously you can’t complain, and I’m not! because this is a fantastic little pattern! However one thing I want to note for if I ever use this the future… the pattern specifies 30cm for fabric and 30cm for lining. Yes, this is technically correct; but personally I prefer for the brim lining of a hat to be of the same fabric as the shell, because you can see it while you’re wearing it. So if you’re cutting out all 4 brim pieces from the outer fabric, 30cm is enough, but just barely! and only if you throw all grainline specs out the window and are super vigilant about miserly pattern placement! I did make sure to cut the band pieces on grain though, I think you have to for the hat to look nice. If you want to cut the brim plus brim lining pieces all on grain then you’d need at least 40cm, or 50cm to be safe
I made all my paper pattern pieces full size, which I HIGHLY recommend; because when you are cutting out fiddly little pieces like these on the fold, and in multiples; then they rarely come out identical to each other.
Best thing; everyone seemed to love their hats! I might even get around to making one for myself one day 🙂
Items; 6-7; I was going to make hats for Tim’s fiance Kelly and for Sam’s lady L too, but when it came time for choosing prints for them, well I chickened out! There were loads of gorgeous prints in Spotlight, pretty, feminine and cute and probably lots that they’d love, but well, you know, choosing a print for another girl is quite a personal thing, and I was nervous they wouldn’t like my choice. Eventually I hit on the idea of making a reusable shopping bag for them. Yes, these are in a print too, that I chose, but a bag is definitely “safer”!
During the last year, it became illegal for supermarkets here to give out single-use shopping bags, and now everyone has to remember to take their own shopping bags for their groceries… of course there are lots of branded reusable shopping bags you can get but everyone likes a cute one to hang up in their kitchen, yes? Kelly and Tim have recently done up their kitchen and btw, it looks AMAZING!!! it’s all dramatically jarrah, black/white, stainless steel, and grey blue; and they also have a lot of indoor plants there. So I chose the above fabric for Kelly’s.
For L; well she loves baking, and she loves cute stuff, so when I saw this bright and fun doughnut print I knew instantly it was perfect for her!
I made my own pattern, based upon the measurements of the little bag holders in Coles checkout stations. My own experience is that the stitched-on-strap style of handle is a weak point in shopping bags, the first thing to go; so I designed the bags to have cut on handles, and to be reinforced with a facing. It is a bit of a fabric hog to cut it out like this, but I’m thinking it will prove to be a much stronger and robust design than separately cut and stitched on straps.
I found some pieces of stiff plastic film to line the bottoms of the bags, and for the groceries to sit on.
Item 8; Cassie specifically requested that I make a dress for her this year, and we went to Fabulous Fabrics together to look at fabrics. They had this divine pink hydrangea print in a cotton sateen, and Cassie wistfully fingered it and mentioned she would love this if it was in linen. We looked at a few other prints and she pointed out a few others, which I tucked away in my head for the future, mwahaha. But just imagine my joy when I went back in to actually buy something for her, and saw they had actually JUST got the hydrangea print in, IN LINEN! PERFECTO!
For the patten, I cut up an old favourite little tunic dress, that she had discarded a long time ago; it is a simple but very pretty little T-shirt style, with a high rounded neckline finished with bias binding, raglan sleeves folded up at the hem, and a centre back zip, and I always thought she looked gorgeous in it. The new dress did seem a tad short when I’d finished it, but otherwise I was very pleased with it. Then she tried it on on Christmas morning, and it was Super Short! Turns out 26yr old Cassie likes to wear her dresses a little longer than 18 yr old Cassie did, haha. who knew?! 😉 Anyway, fortunately I had extra fabric, even after making her matching bucket hat, so I extended it with an extra piece attached underneath the hemline. This is a technique I’ve used on several of my own dresses in the past, I do think it makes for an interesting hemline detail, even if you don’t need to add length. To make it look more like “intentional design detail” rather than “whoops, need to add length because it’s scandalously SHORT” I folded and stitched a series of tucks, and love how this looks! A hidden bonus is that this adds some weight to the hemline… and I think linen dresses can often benefit from a little extra weightiness at the bottom.
Items 9-2000, might be overshooting the mark but just roughly guess-timating there; so I also like to make something both useful and fun for my extended family members, and this usually ends up being an edible something … this year it was gingerbread pussycats! So of course we have our own three darling little fluffykins, and I hit on the bright idea of icing the gingerbread puddycats to symbolise The Girls.
I’d made huge batches so this took quite a long time, but turned out pretty cute I think! The kids were tickled pink!
My recipe is adapted from a free recipe from Taste.com, and my own lemon icing is a sort of hybrid royal icing/ regular icing. Sophie has green eyes, so I painstakingly picked out the green cachous from a multicoloured jar. I couldn’t get black food colouring! so settled for dark purple-y/blue for Sophie, and sky blue for Zoe, who is a greyish blue point with blue eyes. Zoe was by far the fiddliest pussy cat to recreate!
Mischka is a mischievous fuzzy wuzzy ginger striped pussy with amber eyes, so I tried to capture her cute and perky nature with a riotous striped icing.
It’s funny; everyone immediately said, “but what about Clara?” and there were lots of jokes as to why she was excluded from the fun but of course the real answer is perfectly simple… I don’t have a dog-shaped cookie cutter! Maybe next time, haha.
I buy these airtight thingies to give them away in, see, practical and useful are my middle names! Each one perfectly fitted 16 gingerpussies.
So, I blog very very rarely about the meals I make; but this year Craig and I decided to cater for the entire extended family lunch, which is a BIG undertaking. We ambitiously planned for a rather (for us) long and involved menu and I’m so proud of us for pulling it off that I thought I’d share … we made all the various dressings and everything!
the makings of maple carrots…
pumpkin and couscous salad…
German-style potato salad…
BBQ asparagus, zucchini and snow pea salad…
veggie rosti with smoked trout; we doubled this recipe and made one with the smoked trout and the second one with smoked salmon
peach and raspberry trifle…
and cherry and nougat semifreddo
the recipes are all from the free Coles cooking magazine that they put out every month. Fair dinkum, this is hands down my favourite source of recipes at the moment… I love it! We also had a ham that I forgot to take a picture of, and Vintage Cellars had high-end champagne going for half price so I bought a dozen of these… honesty, it all felt very special and went so well, we had such fun, and we were so chuffed everybody at our party had such a gorgeously happy day too!
So that was Christmas this year!! it felt rather epic and stressful all month leading up to it, but now it’s the morning after, and I’m feeling peaceful and relaxed with a happy post-party glow, the house is clean and back to normal; and most of all I am SO GLAD that I did go to the effort of making as lovely a day as I could for all my amazing family. It’s always SO worth it 🙂 Until next time!
