Christmas is coming.

And our youngest is in need of a stocking. We couldn't get her one to match the other four so I decided to make her one of her own. Annoyingly the hoop for my machine is broken and waiting on a new one but was still pleased with the outcome. The fabric is Holiday Frost which I bought from the lovely Rachel at Rooftop Fabrics. (If you haven't come across them before take a look). It is lined with a cheaper white cotton from our shop up the road and the cuff is micro fleece also from Rooftop. It has a ribbon hanger and a red button to finish it off. I was undecided whether to use a pattern or draw around one of ours and I ended up downloading a pattern from Simply Notable. You could easily just draw your own though. To add the lining I added a slightly larger seam and just popped it inside the stocking before sewing the cuff on.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

But I did!

And so it turns out that I am now the owner of Simply Sewing. Just in PDF format. I shall have a look and see what I can rustle up to put on here so you can all get an idea of what the book is like. 

We have been getting ready for Christmas here. We had a party at home today with just the family and the boys thought it was great. Yesterday we had cousins over for tea and they all ran circles round us adults. 

I had an end of a stall yesterday with some one else, very last minute, (30mins before the event), but I made a few €'s so I was pleased with that. I also learnt a bit about what people will or wont buy. Always interesting to see what people are interested in.

I hope everyone is getting on well with their preparations for Christmas.

Until next time. :)

Or Not

Well actually I didn't win as despite there being nothing in the blog post to indicate as such it's only open to US residents. I knew it was too good to be true. ;)

Shwin and WIN!

I have won! 

I was very pleased to receive the email as I had forgotten about entering the competition. Shwin and Shwin were having a giveaway over on their blog (check it out here) and the lady running the giveaway contacted me today to say I was the random number generated by rafflecopter. (Well actually she just said Congratulations you have won but you get the gist). The book is Simple Sewing by Katie Lewis. You can visit her blog here. 

I shall let you know what it is like when I receive it and have completed some of the projects. 

Family

I have just returned from a short trip back to the UK to visit family and friends and attend a hospital appointment. It was lovely to go back and see people we miss out here and to spend a bit of quality time with my parents. The children stayed behind with Dad due to commitments here. It was quite a novelty waking up in an empty bed with no small people crawling over me and eating all my lunch with no one trying to steal it from me. It is lovely being in Germany but going back home is also pretty good.

This is from earlier in the year when family came to visit us.

Making Time

So I can't remember if I told you or not but hubby and I have moved lots of furniture around and sold children's beds and bought bunk beds and had a complete over haul. The upshot of all that was I have a proper sewing space rather than the dining room table. I didn't ever really need one before we moved here as I didn't sew much before we moved here but with the purchase of the lovely Brother Innov-is 955 for Christmas last year I have found sewing has become quite a hobby. As has fabric hoarding. SO we found an Expedit unit on our local sale site and snapped it up. It has a desk and 8 cubby holes. It came with four boxes already matching the the boxes we had in our old unit which was just a bonus. Those boxes are now full of fleece, linen, wadding, cushion pads and all sorts of other gems. I still don't have quite enough space to store everything but it is looking so much better than it did before. And it has given me the urge to do a little bit of sewing. I posted already about the skirt I sewed for our youngest last night. I am still in love with the fabric and undecided quite what to do with the left overs. 

Yesterday I also made some coasters with interfacing in them. First time I have used interfacing in anything other than a shirt collar. And I was quite pleased with the result. So here they are ready to wrap.

And today I had a go at some snack bags. They look tiny as the fabric I wanted to use I have almost run out of and I had a specific person in mind when I made them. But actually they have turned out to be a great size for a handful or two of nuts or dried fruit etc. I am really enjoying trying out all these new things. 

In fact he could even keep his tees in them if he wanted to.

The final sewing make of the day I have yet to photograph as it is now in my sons room. As I said we have had a complete makeover furniture wise in their room. So I have made a small hanging tidy/caddy to hang over the end of the bunk. I will have to make one for the other son too of course but only managed to get the one finished today. I had a rough idea of what I wanted to do as he used to have one of those mid sleeper beds with a hanging tidy on it. We used to keep a teddy and the current bedtime story in it among other things. I Googled for some inspiration/consolidation of my idea and was pleased to find several pictures of very similar things. I will endeavor to get the second one done and get a picture of the two in action. 

Moving on from sewing I am currently waiting for the resin to dry in a pair of corps cuff links I have made for a friends brother in law this evening. I meant to do in months ago but he went to Canada and I have only just got round to doing it now he is back again. I am hoping to deliver them tomorrow. When they are finished I shall take a photo to share with you. 

What do you do when the husband is watching Machete?

Last night  while the hubby was watching his film I sat and looked at my stash. I have had this gorgeous babycord for a while so I decided it was time to put it to good use.

I was very happy with the result and I think she likes it. She didn't try to pull it off anyway. 

Please excuse the camera it was taken on the kindle and the little madam was determined to try and catch th  kindle and refused to sit still.

What do you do when your partner takes over the tv?