Say Goodbye to Wrapping Paper

Merry Christmas! We just got our first snow last night - just in time for a beautiful White Christmas!

We're in the late morning Christmas lull after opening presents. Our daughter is down for her nap and our son is playing happily with a toy. I feel very blessed this Christmas! We tried to keep things simple this year. We only got our kids two good quality toys and one book each. I think it was just the right amount, especially with how young they are. It's so easy to get caught up in the materialistic side of gift giving, but if you make the effort, things can be as simple as you want to make them.

Also, we don't really do Santa, so that, for us, makes it easier and simpler to focus on Christ for the holiday. We used a simple scripture advent calendar which was short and perfect for our young kids.

One of my goals for this year in simplifying was to do away with wrapping paper and to wrap gifts just with fabric bags. They were very simple and fast to make, but I did learn a few things to do and not to do and so thought I'd share. Remember - this is not an exact science! No measuring was done.

1. To start with, over the last few months I slowly collected pieces of the least expensive Christmas cotton fabric at JoAnn's. Searching the remnant bin is key, because you find all sorts of good cotton Christmas remnants of various sizes, and sometimes it's the more expensive fabric for a good bargain. I got various sizes cut: 1/4 yard, 1/2 yard, and 1 yard. It's really whatever sizes you want, but I wouldn't do less than a 1/4 yard because they get harder to sew.

2. When it was time to sew, I just left the fabric folded like it comes off the bolt, cut the widths I wanted or just left the 1/4 yard or 1/2 yard like it was. (For the smaller bags I cut the 1/4 yard in half width-wise and then I just had to add a bottom seam to one of the bags.) Then I flipped the fabric so the right sides were together and sewed up the sides, the salvage edges at the top and left open. Then I folded the salvage edge down about an inch and sewed all the way around to create a channel for the ribbon drawstring to go through. I left a 2" gap near one of the side seams for the ribbon to go into.

3. Then I flipped the bag right side out, threaded a ribbon through using a safety pin pinned into the end to get it through, tied a knot in the ribbon, and then I was done!

4. About the ribbon: I learned the hard way that only two types of ribbon work for this bag - the satin kind and the grosgrain kind. (it's the kind that has a bumpy weave)

Bags

Do not use cording! It doesn't not draw the bag closed very well. And don't use ribbon with any sparkly metalic-looking ribbon. Mine just fell apart! Wired ribbon also probably won't work that well either. These types of ribbon just don't slip smoothly through the channel for drawing the bag closed.

Bad ribbon. Bad! Too much metalic.

Good ribbon! Nice and satiny.
Don't you just love the gingerbread boys? The peppermint candy look so yummy too.

Lots of bags!

5. I also learned that more small and medium sized bags were the way to go. I think we had too many big ones. I did make one large bag made from a whole yard of fabric, but we didn't have any presents that big, so we didn't use it. Most presents tend to be on the smaller side, but it was hard to know that at the time I was making them.

The pros & cons:
The downside to these bags is that there is no hiding what's in there. It's very simple to feel through the fabric unless you disguise the present in something else like a box. Also, the security isn't the greatest. There is no tape keeping curious fingers from slipping the bag open, unless you wrap the ribbon around the top a few times and tuck it in. We put our presents out Christmas morning, so we didn't have that problem.
You also have to store the bags, but they lie flat, so it's not that big a deal.

On the other hand... The great thing is- no clean up! No mounds of crinkly annoying paper to fill up your garbage can or the landfill. You can reuse these year after year and they make adorable bags to give away too. The fabric and ribbon aren't too expensive, especially if you get them on sale or clearance. Also, you can get the cutest fabrics! Just take a look at those adorable snow penguins in the picture above.

Something else we did new this year were homemade gift tags. (You can see them in the first three photos.) There are four of us, so I found four cute Christmas/wintery symbols of the same theme through Microsoft Clip Art and copied and pasted a lot of them into a Word document. (You can search for snowflake, snowman, candy cane, Christmas tree, Christmas ornament, Christmas lights, Christmas mittens, Christmas bell, holly, Christmas candle, Christmas star, Christmas gift, Christmas stocking, and Christmas poinsetta to find ones similar to mine above.) Then I printed them in color onto white card stock, cut them out and punched a hole in each one.

The cool thing, was that the kids didn't know which symbol was theirs. I think this helped with not encouraging the "look at all of my presents" mentality. All we did was put who the present was from on the back of the tag. The kids had lots of fun hunting down their symbol once they knew which one to look for. I just looped the tag through the ribbon using the hole I punched out.

Well, I'm going to go and enjoy my Christmas candy and maybe go out for another round of sledding later. Have a wonderful holiday!

Quilt

Remember my Autumn quilt?

Well, it's taken a back seat to my other sewing project - some Regency-era historical clothing. But, I did finally get all the layers put together and it is now in the official quilting hoop. I hope to get to it before winter starts, but it's looking doubtful.

Our garden has finally been put to sleep. I've piled leaves on it and hope they will act as multi-purpose mulch/weed suppressor. I've been surprised by how well my compost it going. It is actually looking like rich, black dirt. I know the crickets and worms like it in there.

Strangely, the flower bulbs I planted in September have started to come up and bloom. Our weather has been a bit warmer than usual, but we still have frosty mornings. Maybe it was the 7" of rain from the hurricane that we got. Even the violets were out all over our yard! I hope it doesn't hurt them to be out prematurely.

I haven't started an new canning projects. The only thing I canned this year were the plain and spiced peaches. It was worth the work for those.

Sorry I've been a bit absent lately. I'm homeschooling my son, so not as much time for blogging!

I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas ahead!

Nearly Finished...

The quilt top is nearly finished!

It's a little blurry, but it's the best shot I got from full view. I managed to have the same fabric touching in only 3 places. Not too bad! It was a harder job than I thought - the no touching thing.

I need to sew on two more rows to the side and then it will be just the perfect size for our queen-sized bed!

And the two fabrics I'm adding -
The brown is for the back. Since I'm quilting it in a gold-colored thread I thought it would show up nicely on the brown.
And the gorgeous glowing orange fabric I was planning on using for the border. I also like that they're the the same pattern, just different colors.

I remember someone telling me that when you make a quilt, always make the backing a surprise - something unexpected. My surprise is the brown with the gold stitching showing through. I'll be quilting in the ditch, stair stepping up the blocks, so it will be a zig-zag pattern. I'm excited to see how it will turn out! I originally planned on tying this quilt, but when it comes down to it, I can never bear to go through with it. I just think the ties would be a distraction to the pattern.

Autumn Quilt Progress

I had some last minute fabric additions:

Leaf print, yellow funky geometric design, green leafy, and red with gold leaf print.
Yummy!

I just felt I needed to add another gorgeous red, a yellow I had originally planned on using, but decided against, and now redecided to use, another deep green (I loved the texture!), and I saw that leaf print and fell in love. How could I not include a fabric like that with all the right colors?!

I've got the blocks all sewn end-to-end for each row and ironed. Now I just need to sew each row offset from one another to mimic a brick path. I think this is the perfect beginners quilt - no corners to worry about matching up!

Autumn Quilt

With the autumny feeling in the air what with the cooler temperatures, drippy clouds, and falling leaves blowing everywhere - already! - I am finally in the mood to get to work on my autumn quilt!

My actual design is based off Amy Butler's beautiful "Lotus Brick Path" quilt design:

I tweaked it a little because I wanted the blocks to be the size of an actual brick and I wanted it to be reminiscent of walking on a brick path in the autumn time with different colored leaves strewn on it, pressed to the path from an autumn rain. I don't know if I'll get that actual affect, but I did my best in choosing fabrics.

Here are the players:

These three are my favorite. The entire quilt was inspired by that pear fabric on the right. It's too bad the colors don't show up very well, because it's just as luscious as a ripe pear!
The left fabric is this cool Indian-inspired fabric I've had for 10 years and the middle is a reproduction 1860s pattern.
Beautiful!

That yellow is an awesome splash of color, just like vivid yellow autumn leaves!

I actually had a lot more fabrics, but I always tend to cut more blocks than I need. So this time I calculated out exactly how many blocks I'd need for a queen-sized blanket, using an actual old brick we dug up on our property for the proper brick dimensions, and starting with my favorite (the pear fabric - of which I didn't have much), I cut it all up and worked my way through the fabrics based on how much I liked them and the balance of colors I needed. There's about an average of 15 blocks of each fabric. I can't wait to start sewing!

Christmas?

So, for some reason my wandering mind has zeroed in on Christmas. I'm thinking about Christmas already! Maybe it's my subconscious yearning for cooler weather. Usually this Christmas contemplation happens in September when I start planning for gifts to give me plenty of weeks to prepare. Well, this time I was actually thinking about a new tradition I wanted to start in our family. I got the idea last Christmas at a friend's house.

Every day of December leading up to Christmas day, her children unwrap one Christmas movie. I don't have that many Christmas movies and don't really want that many, so instead I decided we could do Christmas books instead, supplemented with the movies we have and Christmas music CDs. (I actually buy new Christmas music every year. This year I'm getting Barbara Streisand's classic Christmas album I grew up listening to - my mom's fave. I can't wait!)

So, I happened to be at Goodwill and they had quite the selection of Christmas books! I bet if I had waited a month or two, they would have been gone. I wanted to focus on Jesus' birth, so I skipped most of the Santa books, making an exception for the classic "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" because it had gorgeous artwork. I'm a sucker for good artwork!

Speaking of art work, one of my most amazing finds was a pop-up book about the 12 Days of Christmas. The paper work is incredible!!! My jaw dropped as they got more and more complicated with each day of Christmas. And for 95 cents, that was a steal!!! I'll have to take picture of one of the pop ups just to show you what I mean.

So, when I got home I pulled the few Christmas books in the kids' regular book collection, added them to the stack and pulled out all our Christmas movies. My music is missing, but I think it might be in the Christmas tub. (That's right! My husband is adamant on keeping our Christmas things down to one large tub. Let me tell you, that is quite the feat for me. I LOVE Christmas!!)

Anyway, our Christmas movies are "White Christmas", "Little Women" (even though it's not all set during Christmas, it always makes me think about Christmas!), "The First Noel", "Mr. Kreuger's Christmas", "The Gift of Love" with Marie Osmond, "The Muppet's Christmas Carol", "A Child's Christmas in Wales",  and a few others. I even have some more movies on my wishlist on Amazon.

Wow, I had no idea I'd have so much to say about Christmas in August, but maybe I just need to get it out of my system. Another Christmas project: Sewing present drawstring bags out of Christmas fabric instead of using wrapping paper. I'll have to wait for an incredible fabric sale sometime in November though.

That's ok! I have tons of sewing projects stacking up. (Go to my historical blog at History:Preserved to see my costume projects.) I have 2 quilts in the works too, but I was waiting until cooler weather to continue on those. (One is a fall quilt with beautiful fall colors and seeing the new autumn fabrics at the fabric store is just killing me! I am just drawn to those earth tones!) Also, I just finished the last of the curtains needed for our house. Whew! I'm keeping my sewing machine busy! It feels good to be sewing again after a long haitus.