Christmas Crafts!

Soooo, this year I did pretty much all of my gifts handmade. I had a LOT of fun doing it, but in the future I must start on them before the day after Thanksgiving...
I did a pretty big variety of things. I have pictures of almost everything I made. A lot of the supplies for these projects came from my Black Friday trip to Joann's. I had a lot of fun making this stuff, and I hope that the people who received the gifts liked them as well. I want to send a shout out to the internet crafting community for the tutorials and ideas. There are a few specific sites, but they will be mentioned in explanations as I go. Now on to the pictures:


The first project that I tackled was a couple of fleece hats. they were super easy and I cranked them out in a couple of hours. I learned how to do this on a little blog called Made By Amanda. The link to the tutorial can be found HERE.


I made Matt a new pillowcase. His stubbly face had sanded (yes that's right I said sanded) through the fabric on his old one. For this there was no tutorial, I just took a yard of fabric and sewed it together. Then I sewed the bottom shut, and hemmed the top. I mostly used measurements from a store bought pillowcase. Nothing fancy here. Matt's grandma gave Steven and Samuel some gorgeous pillowcases for Christmas, but I haven't dared go that fancy yet. They involved three different kinds of fabric. Maybe one day...


I made a couple of rice filled hot bags. Okay, actually I made four. I ended up with one extra too! These are simply like making a little pillow, only filling it with rice instead of something fluffy. They are great for warming up cold toes at night. A couple of minutes in the microwave, and you are in business!

The two above pictures are some headbands that I made. I made a bunch for myself and a few for gifts. They come together really fast and are a lot of fun to wear. I learned how to make them from my favorite craft blog, Make It And Love It. The tutorial can be found HERE.


These magnets were for my mom. She has tons of pictures of my boys on her fridge, and now she has some picture magnets to hold them up with. These are just simple flat marbles with a picture glued on the back and a magnet onto the back of that. Pretty fun.


These are a few sets of earrings and a necklace that I made for my cousins oldest daughter. She is a teenager and I thought that these would be fun for her to accessorize with. I pretty much threw them together with some of my leftover beads that I had lying around. I did buy the pendant for the necklace just for this project though, on sale on black Friday...


This project was one of my favorites. I made it for my Aunt. It has pictures of all of her grandkids on it. I got the beads at Joann's (I LOVE that place!!!). They came with a plastic insert to put on top of the picture, so the pictures can be changed if she ever wants to! I think I will definitely use these beads again for another project. I just don't know what yet.


These blankets are another of my favorites. They were for my sister-in-law and her husband. I got the fabric panels off of freecycle. All I did was sew the panel onto the middle of a 2-yard piece of polar fleece (super black Friday sale item, and the main reason I went on Black Friday). Then I just blanket stitched around the edge with embroidery thread. They turned out a lot better than I thought they would, and there were leftover panels for whatever projects they might want to do.
And last but not least... My patchwork quilt. It took the longest, it was the biggest, and I really love how it turned out.

This project was for my Dad. 8 or 9 years ago, When my dad's mom died, I took all of her clothes and cut them up into quilt squares. I thought it would be fun to make a quilt out of them one day. Right after Thanksgiving of this year, I decided that "one day" should be this Christmas. So I got out the squares organized them and sewed my little heart out. This project was the most stressful because it was the most involved. It was also my first solo quilting project. Even though I was sewing up until the last minute (I did the final stitching around the edge at 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve), I really like how it turned out. My mom and grandma helped me tie it. And we can all thank my awesome brother for the pictures because I was a genius and forgot to take any until I was already home from the Christmas weekend.


And the only project that I can think of that I didn't get a picture of, (and incidentally, almost forgot to wrap and take with me to Logan) was a dishsoap dispenser made out of an oil dispensing bottle, some pretty marbles, and a fish plant. It turned out really nice, but you will have to take my word for it.