Placemats For my Sister

My sister has a collection of holly-shaped dishes that she brings out for Christmas. She really loves these dishes, so I decided to make her a set of quilted holly leaf placemats and two bunches of holly leaves; one for the center of the table and one for the sideboard. I picked out one holly-patterned fabric, two shades of green that were in the printed fabric, and red that also matched the red in the holly fabric (all are cotton broadcloth).  I then drew two slightly different holly leaf patterns out of big sheets of paper. After tracing the pattern onto the backs of the fabric and onto fusible fleece, I fused the fleece to the back sides of the top fabric.

I then sewed the fabrics together, turned, and quilted them to resemble the veins in leaves. After they were sewn I added yo-yo red "berries" near the stem of each leaf and the center of the two bunches of leaves.

My big score was finding the double-bowl (pictured above) in my sister's holly pattern in a thrift store a week or so before Christmas.

More in-law Gifts

I only made one of the gifts for my other sister-in-law, another set of coasters. These I liked so much that I was tempted to keep them for myself, but I thought that they would go perfectly in their home. Besides, I can always make another set to keep!

 Like the blue set, these are made by needle and wet felting wool. I started with the needle to get the rough shape, then wet-felting made them denser and smaller, then back to the needle to get their final shape. These wools are from both local and Scottish sheep, and the stems are made with local baby alpaca fleece (oh so soft!).

For my brother-in-law I followed the same theme that I started last year. In 2010 I made a poster featuring the face of their wonderful dog, Ted:

This year I decided to make a pseudo political poster that showcased two of their cats, Tom and Ollie. Tom and Ollie were both strays that adopted my sister's family at different times. Tom's the buff tiger, Ollie is the black and white cat. Both are affectionate and magnificent, but Ollie the newcomer is determined to drive Tom and their other cat, Rosie, out of the house. Which inspired me to make this year's poster:

 Needless to say, they would NEVER pose together like this, but thanks to the magic of Photoshop we can see what it would look like!

Christmas presents

I know that it's been a while since I've posted anything; most of my time and energy lately has gone into making Christmas presents for my friends and family. Of course I didn't want to post pictures of these until after they were received by their intended recipients!

I'll start with two of the presents that I made for one of my sister-in-laws. The first is a set of wool coasters, complete with an extra-large coaster for a pitcher of cold drinks or a teapot. These were made using a combination of wet-felting and needle-felting to get the right shape and density.




  

















Next is a tea cozy made primarily of mohair. This I knitted flat into a rectangle, then I used the same mohair yarn to sew up the sides, leaving spaces for the spout and handle of the teapot.  After that I wet-felted the cozy to shrink it a bit.

I then made flowers using several shades purple and green ribbon- both satin and grosgrain- and sewed a different type of white button into the center of each flower.

I'll post more presents soon!