Erline Elf

My daughter is 3 and half years old now and I consider this to be her first Christmas. I mean - when she is consciously waiting, counting days and is crazy excited. First year she's talking about Santa and taking part in her nursery nativity play. Two previous  Christmases she just was playing with wrapping paper and was a bit scared of white bearded man :)

Accordingly, I'm making effort too. Lots of mums seem to be organizing little elves for their kids. Some of the elves are little grassers to watch kids and report back to Santa, some just having casual holiday from toy making.

So I thought I'll make one for my little girl. I came across Ernie and Erline Amigurumi pattern. Pattern is well written, I thought. Very easy to follow and after about a week's worth of evenings I had Erline the Elf ready.

My daughter was ecstatic. I, however, felt little sad having to sit back and let Santa take all the credit for my hard work :)

Very quick Advent Calendar

To be honest, I wasn't going to have advent calendar. However, my 3.5 year old daughter is now asking me if it's Christmas yet. Every morning :) I tell her that not yet, then she asks if it's tomorrow. Or day after tomorrow. Or day after after tomorrow. Well, you get the idea. I need an advent calendar to help her understand how many days there's left.

So I started looking for one. But none of the ones that I had seen had this clear visual count down feature.  Until saw one mama on the patenting forum make toilet roll advent calendar. That was it! It was perfect and I had to make one immediately as it was 2nd of December already (so 2 days too late by then).

I didn't have toilet rolls, so I used paper tube from gift wrapping paper. Cut it up, sewn the bottoms up, decorated (I went for messy torn paper look). Strung them together, pined some pretty paper onto cork board and then pinned strings. 2 hours later I had an advent calendar. Bit wonky, but will do the job perfectly. And I can remove one pocket each day, so my daughter can see, that there is less days left and can count them.

Lace Scarf

Beautiful lace scarf, made from Noro Silk Garden Lite. This enchanting shade is called 2010 and it's discontinued, but I managed to track it down in Germany, so that it matched hat that I gave to my cousin (and now I made this matching scarf for her).

I used this Anne pattern, although I later found something very similar if not exactly the same, for free: Queen Anne's Lace Scarf.

More cushions

My friend saw my bright Echino cushions and asked for a splash of colour for her.
So here they are, two cushions, front and back.
I'm getting better and better at invisible zip, having correct sewing foot for it makes world of difference.

And another Bean Bag

Although after first bean bag I swore to myself that I will never ever make another one, I had to make second one rather promptly. It was either that or refereeing bare knuckle fight between children over first bean bag :)

This time I was a bit more clever and made it round shaped. *Much* easier. Still took me whole day though. And I got hubby to help to fill it up - it definitely is 2 peoples job.

I had to do fair bit of piecing, as am starting to run out of decent sized pieces of fabric.

It turned out rather good. Actually, now I could be persuaded to make more :)

PS> measurements: 13" high and circle measures 26' diagonally. 

First big quilt

After teaching myself quilting basics and practicing on small quilts, it was time to make a 'proper', big quilt.

Fabric used:
'Cameo' FQ bundle  for the top of the quilt
Cheep and cheerful floral fabric from IKEA for the backing
'Hello Luscious' jelly roll left overs for the binding

Ella's memory box {decoupage}

Ella is not just any girl that turned two this year. I witnessed Ella come into this beautiful world. I was there. I heard her first cry and saw her Mum and Dad holding her for the very first time.

When she turned 2 few months ago, I was faced with choice. I could give her a toy, that she could play with and enjoy it, or I could give her something that she might not appreciate now, but would appreciate it later. I went for the latter. I thought, if I won't give it now, I will have to wait until she's 16, because now, that she's still little, she won't notice that I haven't brought  toy or something else that she could enjoy *right now* :)

I wanted to make more than just a box where her mum could put all precious little keepsakes, I wanted box itself to contain memories. So I lined the inside with pictures. Lots of them. Pictures of her just born, pictures of her parents, her grandparents, cousins, great grandmother.

This was my first big decoupage project. Steep learning curve, but I'm very pleased how it turned out.  I need to make more, for my children.

Here's the  box before I started

 And here are some photos of the finished memory box