Guild Secret Quilter swap
The CJMQG held a Secret Quilter swap. Participants signed up and filled out a questionnaire. My recipient seemed to really love her dog, so I yoinked one of her pictures of him from her Pinterest page. I made a little digital painting of him with Photoshop and turned it into a print on Spoonflower.
I got a yard of fabric and made a simple tote bag.
Then I made a couple little ornaments, just to round it out.
Christmas: our house
When I was making snowflake ornaments, I thought a bit about the spiderweb ornament tradition. We have two small ones, and I thought Alice might like a bigger one because she likes Shelob from Lord of the Rings.
Alice likes a lot of the bad guys in Lord of the Rings, for whatever reason, and I had joked to her that we could have an Eye of Sauron tree topper. And then I made one out of paper as a surprise when she was out with Bill.
And not LotR related: Alice was upset that the cats' stocking didn't have their names on it when the other three stockings for her, me, and Bill had our names on them. So I made a new stocking for the cats. (Then she got mad that I put their faces on it, not just their names, because she's three.)
Christmas gifts: little stuff
A glasses case.. I added little paper glasses to make its use a little more apparent to the recipient.
An embellished case for a mix CD.
My generic gift this year was snowflake ornaments. They're free motion machine embroidered over polyester tulle using various metallic and nonmetallic threads.
Christmas gifts: clothes!
A short sleeve Alabama Chanin cardigan for my mom, in the Peony color from Alison Glass Knits. Patch from CatCoven on etsy.
A long sleeve Alabama Chanin cardigan for my sister-in-law, in the Indigo color from Alison Glass Knits. Patch cut from a piece of Cotton + Steel fabric.
Maxi-length Alabama Chanin wrap skirt for my cousin's oldest daughter. The fabric is a slightly sparkly solid from the Doodles line at Jo-Ann.
It's so good that I enjoy all this hand sewing. These pushed my garment count for the year up to nineteen.
Christmas gifts: Nine pillowcases!
It seemed like a good idea at the time! Fast and easy.
My dad collects antique and vintage toys, so he got the Dick & Jane pedal car print and the Cotton + Steel viewmaster reels.
Four Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and two Star Wars for some kids.
Potholders
The November meeting of the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild featured a holiday or seasonal potholder swap. I thought, "I ain't make a potholder." And then I inherited some fabric from a family friend, and I was like, "This is perfect for a fall-themed potholder," and then I found a tutorial on Craftsy, and suddenly I had two potholders.
After I posted them on the internet, two other people loved them so much that I made two more pairs and sent them off before Thanksgiving.
So "I won't make a potholder" turned into making six potholders. Whoops.
A nice flowy shirt and some overdyed storebought clothes
There was a customized garment posted on the AC Journal, an A-Line dress with sleeves added ("just trace the armhole"). But I'm lazy, and the tshirt is cut on the fold instead of having a seam down the front, so I started with that pattern and used the A-Line tunic as a guide to add length and width.
Fabric is the ghost print from Lizzy House Hit Parade Knits by Andover.
This was my sixteenth garment in 2015, and the last one I made for myself before the holiday makefest.
This was a bathrobe I found on the clearance rack in Marshalls. It was a marled white color, and the belt was missing. But it looked like it could be a perfect length cardigan with pockets, so I had to get it. I removed the belt loops and dyed it, and now I wear it like it's not a bathrobe.
There are a few kinds of clothes I can't get enough of. One is semi-structured jackets made from knit fabrics. This one was on the clearance rack at Anthropologie over the summer. It was originally white with wide horizontal pale blue stripes. I dyed it once then in a forest green dye, but it wasn't really the green I wanted. I dyed it again in a very strong grass green bath and got it closer to what I was looking for.
Vulture embroidery
Finally polished off this guy when I was finishing up all the Drawlloween pieces. Everybody got backs and closed edges and a hanging mechanism.
Alice’s Halloween costume
Alice got really into watching Octonauts in the fall, and learned about the vampire squid, and asked to be one for Halloween. Cool, OK. What do I do?
I ordered a dyeable hoodie, skirt, and leggings from Dharma Trading. Then I dyed it all plus some scrap fabric in maroon. I didn't really make it dark enough, but she loves pink and was fine with it.
The vampire squid has a membrane that stretches between its tentacles, forming a sort of skirt. Underneath it are a series of spikes. The squid turns itself inside out to display the spikes when it gets scared. I sewed and stuffed a whole lot of little spikes, and stitched them on the underside of the skirt in rows. Then I cut tentacle shapes from the scrap fabric and sewed that to the outside of the skirt. If I had spent a little more time on it, I might have added a drawstring to the hem of the skirt to flip it all up over her head at once.
I cut pieces from the scraps to make those little flappy fins on the head. Then I cut some circles from green scraps, and sewed them down with glow in the dark thread and a little glow in the dark fabric paint, because vampire squid live in the midnight zone and have glowing spots on their heads.
Hers was, I believe, the only homemade costume in her whole preschool class, but she didn't seem to notice or mind.
and WAY LATER.. drawlloween day 31.
Day 31 of Drawlloween was DRAGON, and so here is a little dragon keeping warm on a nice toasty jack o'lantern.