Flying Barrel Of Monkeys

I’m trying to make most of the gifts we give this year. I have a craft room – I need to use it! I’m hoping to get ahead enough to make the gift packaging too, but as a habitual procrastinator I’m not sure that’s going to happen.

I did get a few gifts made last week. One of my friends let me come over and raid her fabric stash to get scraps to use for a project.

I used the scraps in my die cut machine to make Build-A-Bear bears and letters to apply on tote bags.

I also made up some felt food while I was at my parents’ house. Mom has a new sewing machine that is fancier than mine, and it was fun to play with it. Her machine has a button to cut the thread for you – very cool! I didn’t get a very good picture of the food, but I’ll post it any way to remind myself what all I attempted. There are two lunch sacks, a red bag filled with potato chips, ravioli with sauce, a ho-ho, a chocolate chip cookie, a fried egg, and a pancake with syrup and butter.

The final project I was able to finish was a superheroine-style cape. It’s pink on one side and green on the other, and I was beyond tickled that I could figure out how to sew it with different colored thread and bobbin so that the colors matched up correctly. I thought for sure I’d mix it up and have the pink thread on the green side, but I did it right the first time! The project wasn’t without difficulties though – I couldn’t get the fusible webbing to adhere on the felt piece and turned up my iron to see if that would help only to melt the felt into a giant lumpy mess. Luckily, I had extra and was able to get it to work on my second attempt.