It is approaching late afternoon, and I am a little puzzled as to why I am getting emails of some of your comments but they are not appearing on the blog. Weird. But never fear, if you have left a comment, the likelihood is that I have read them. Hooray for smart phones! At least I know you are there, and that is wonderful.
Sleep and I were not on speaking terms last night, so I was still awake at 4am. This is not convenient at all. I am the one in the corner looking like a zombie. And yes, I remembered all the meds too. (Actually, as I wrote that I remembered that I had not taken the lunch time lot and it is now 4pm, so I made a hasty dash to the pile of boxes. My life is ruled by the boxes. But if they work then that is OK.)
So, Linds in dopey mode is the order of the day.
I was thinking earlier of some of the simple things I have made in the past. You know, you can get plain fleece blankets at Ikea for very little money. One year I either appliqued something on the corner of a fleece or embroidered something for Christmas, like a Christmas tree, or a candy cane, or a heart - anything in bright Christmassy fabric, and then gave them as gifts. Ikea also came to the fore another year, when I bought a pile of plain white hand towels - again, very reasonable - and did the same on them. Lovely seasonal guest towels! Either applique or embroider, add a bottle of hand soap, and you have a lovely gift.
I absolutely refuse to spend a fortune which I do not have. But a few simple ideas and anything is possible. If you haven't done much sewing, you may not have discovered the delights of Wonder Under. A very descriptive name for double sided iron on vilene. You iron a piece of it, rough side down, onto the back of the fabric you will be using for your applique, and then trace your pattern onto it, and cut it out, peel off the backing and iron it in place. Just remember that if you are using letters, to trace them back to front, so when it is cut out, the letters make sense and are not all backwards.
And then you can either straight stitch by hand or machine, zigzag, or do blanket stitch around the applique. A little time, and it looks lovely and different.
Red fleece blankets cost about £3. Cream, purple, black, turquoise - loads of colours. And you can personalise them so easily. By the way, if you are making a template of something like a heart, the best way to do it freehand is to do one side and cut the one side out. Then fold the paper and draw round the edge. At least it won't look wonky. Or it will be symmetrically wonky.
Recession heaters, hand warmers. Bunting. Aprons. Table runners (and do not for ONE SECOND believe that the quilt as you go method is easy - I have unmitigated disasters trying that one. I do mine the old fashioned way now after a thousand miles of unpicking.
At least it didn't put me off!
You can see last year's sewing efforts here - there are loads of photos of some of the things i made. But right now, I need either a huge cup of coffee or some matchsticks to keep the eyes open!
Have you checked your spam folder for comments? Sometimes Blogger tosses them in there and you must tell Blogger that they are not spam. It happens to me quite often.
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm going back to see some of the things you made last year because I only vaguely remember that there was a last year. I'm going to be looking for some wonder under...we probably don't have that, but something similar surely.