How was your Christmas? Ours was certainly a time of merriment (and lots of eating) :-)

One of the goals that I set for myself at the beginning of 2007, was to make clothes for the girls. To date I have only managed to make this dress! So I took some time out between Christmas parties to make a few more bits and pieces for the girls’ summer wardrobe.

“Home-pants” because, well, they’re only to be worn while hanging out at home :-) I drew up a pattern from scratch and hoped it would work. I made them wide-legged and these were more for practice. Although they fit the girls okay they are still a little bit short and a little loose around the waist so for the next round of pants-making, I’ll lengthen the pant leg and shorten the elastic a little bit.

Skirts using Kate’s easy-to-follow-and-quick-to-whip-up tutorial:

A summer dress for Aurora using Shannon’s highly entertaining tutorial:

And this top for Ava using a pattern from this excellent Japanese sewing book:

These clothes were so much fun to work on and I must admit that it can easily get addictive! Here’s Ava modelling her outfit:

What a year it has been! I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and encouragement this year. Your feedback and comments have been an incredible source of motivation and creative energy, and in turn have given me the confidence to try new things, to seek to improve upon what I’ve made, and better my sewing/designing/making skills. I have also learnt so much from advice you’ve given and links you’ve provided - thank you for your generosity and taking the time to visit my little website and leave comments and send emails.

Thank you very much to those who had confidence in what I made that they were willing to exchange money for it :-) I truly hope you are enjoying your softie/artwork/accessory. This was also the first year of wholesale/consignment for One Red Robin, so huge thanks to the all the retailers that were willing to take a chance on a crafting newbie and sell my creations. I’m excited about 2008 and the various things in train, which will hopefully materialise in the next few weeks and I can share them here.

I wish you all a safe and memorable celebration as you welcome in the New Year with loved ones, and I look forward to sharing more of this fun and unpredictable crafty journey we are all on with you in 2008.

“Joy to the World, the Lord is come!” [Sing along!]

From my family to you and yours: Wishing you Christmas blessings of peace, joy, and hope over the holiday season and throughout the new year ahead!

[P.S. The pattern/instructions for making this Owl Pillow is now available in the current issue of Handmade Magazine (Vol25 No3) if you happen to be looking for an easy, last-minute gift to make :-)]

So glad you like the t-shirts with Golden Book illustrations! I’m sure others have been doing similar things with Golden Book illustrations - not just on shirts but bags, pillows, etc. As I’ve been telling some commenters, most of the kids who will be receiving the t-shirt-and-book gift do not own a Little Golden Book so I am hoping the gift will be a fun introduction to them and will spark an interest in collecting more of those little gems :-)

Some have asked what fabric sheets I use for printing. I use an Australian product called “Premium Fabric Sheets”, which I purchase from Australian Country Quilts. This product requires an intermediate step of rinsing the fabric in cold water after printing the image. It adds a little more time to the process but the quality of the fabric and the resulting print is so much better than other fabrics sheet products I’ve used - so I highly recommend it!

I’m happy to say that I have finally finished my Christmas gift crafting for this year. These were completed this week:

Two more tote bags made from canvas using a modified Amy Butler Frenchy bag pattern:

A pair of Sleepy Huggable Bunnies for 2 sisters:

And a mini-tote bag made of canvas and linen (with little owl pockets on one side and recipient initials on the other side), which will hold this wonderful book for a delightfully daring girl who is probably reading this :-)

The girls and I also managed to pop into Cintia’s gorgeous shop, My Poppet, to pick up some handmade goodness for the girls for Christmas. It’s always a treat to catch up with the lovely Miss Cinti and thanks to her sales skills (hee-hee!), I came away with this sweet, sweet, can’t-help-but-giggle-when-I-look-at-this dress handmade by Miss Haidee (using vintage fabric) for Ava:

And for Aurora I picked up these equally sweet, sweet shoes by Victoria-based Chook Leaf who work with families in Bali in a fair-trade style arrangement to handcraft a range of irresistible infant/toddler footwear:

The only package I am eagerly awaiting now is a few cool t-shirts from 220Volt. They are meant for male relatives - I am so hopeless when it comes to making stuff for guys :-) Hopefully they will arrive by the end of this week.

I’m really happy to have made the Handmade Pledge this year - it certainly motivated me to invest time in making gifts as well as invest time in seeking out handmade goodness. I didn’t get to give handmade to everyone on our list (those who didn’t got boxed chockies instead - after all, chocolate is a universal language, right? :-)) but I hope to be more organised for next year (and also less sick!).

Thank you all for your lovely messages on my last post. I’m feeling normal again :-) And it definitely feels great to be feeling normal again!

A few more things have been crossed off the “to-make” Christmas gift list.

A couple of Baby Chibi Dolls:

And 12 kids and toddlers t-shirts. The screen-printing thing didn’t work out so I decided to choose a few of my favourite Little Golden Book Classic illustrations, scanned them, and printed them onto fabric sheets, which I then appliqued onto the t-shirts.

I also bought 12 different Little Golden Book Classics, so each t-shirt will be wrapped up with a book also.

Can you believe it’s just a week until Christmas??? It’s always interesting reading how others are preparing for Christmas on the other side of the world, dealing with much cooler weather and snow. We’ve been having very sunny weather here lately and the girls have been enjoying spending time outside.

We’re going to have Christmas Eve dinner at our house this year, with family and extended family coming over to join us, so major clean-up has begun starting with the front-yard. Hubby had the girls help him plant some flowers down the front path.

“Prepare-for-large-family-Christmas-Dinner” is another list all together and hope to get cracking on that list very soon too :-)

My little craft room has remained untouched over the last 5 days:

I fell ill once again. You must be tired of me saying that - because I know that I’ve said it a lot this year! Another infection. Fever on and off for the last 4 days and the inability to eat anything. I still somehow managed to fulfill some commitments for the girls, but I missed a friend’s wedding/reception that I was really, really looking forward too. I’ve had another blood test and am patiently awaiting the results which will arrive next week.

No sewing has been done. So my Christmas crafting plans have been thrown out the window. I still plan on working on the kids t-shirts but all the other things on my “to-make” list have been crossed out and new things added to my “to-buy” list.

And to top it all off, it appears that the softies I submitted to the plush toy show at the Kismet Gallery have been lost in the mail. I don’t usually register mail that I send overseas as I have never had a problem but I will definitely be thinking twice from now on. Bummer.

Sorry, didn’t mean to make this post so depressing. I’m just feeling worn-out, disillusioned, and almost at the end of my tether as other unhappy things have also happened recently and all of it a few days away from Christmas.

Anyway, probably best for me to end it here before this post becomes even more depressing! Thanks so much for all the wonderful encouragement received on the last post for Ava. I hope to read all the comments to her tonight.

I think I’ll be off-line until the weekend. Til then, be well :-)

How has your week been?

Mine has been a blur of activity - it often feels like everything speeds up a notch once December rolls around :-) I have started the Christmas crafting and kicked it off with screen-print experimentation for kids t-shirts as per this tutorial. Not going as well as I had hoped as the painting of the glue into the right places to establish a smooth line is proving to be very tricky. And the Mod-Podge is very un-cooperative.

I might go with Plan B, which is applique t-shirts :-)

Ava had her very first Pre-school Christmas concert this week. Ava is an incredibly shy girl and absolutely hates the unfamiliar and breaking what she knows is the routine, so her teachers and I were a little concerned that maybe she just wouldn’t be up to performing on stage (they had to learn at least 10 songs for the concert!) But she rocked it like a pro! She really enjoyed being on stage - sang every song (although she probably made up a few lyrics along the way) and did all the actions. She did so well!

Here she is with some classmates on stage - she’s the small one (actually, she’s probably the smallest in her class :-)).

Her teachers have been so wonderful and have really helped to build up her confidence and overcome her fear of social situations over the past year. She’s been attending a Montessori pre-school and I believe she has really benefited from it. Since school finishes for the year next week, I was able to whip up some tote-bags for her 2 teachers. Both use a sturdy cotton canvas. One uses up Etsuko fabric and the other uses gorgeous fabric from Lara.

I decided to keep them simple as I’m not completely sure what their threshold is in terms of embellishments :-) The pattern is this one by Amy Butler - I just love the shape but decided to skip the top-panel. Super easy and quick to whip up.

And I also had some time to work on Little Piggy version 2 (version 1 here) for a project I am really keen to share with you but can’t just yet - hopefully before Christmas!

Have a fun weekend!

Thank you for all the lovely comments on the Woodland Girls :-) So happy that you like them!

This is just a quick post to let you know that I have finally updated the shop. This is the last update for the year and I hope to begin updating the shop again with new stuff in February 2008. Here’s what’s currently available:

More details and heaps more pics over at my shop.

Now to dive into Christmas gift-making! But first, time to grab a coffee and a cupcake :-)