Forever Quilting 4 You

It’s the end of my first year as an Island Batik Ambassador and I made it! It has been one heck of a ride, just like the roller coaster at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the Giant Dipper, with lots of ups and downs, and twists and turns. It was a hair-raising experience indeed! But I made it through in one piece!

This month’s challenge was to make anything I wanted, inspired by a holiday of my choice! Sing along with me – “Tis’ the season to be jolly!!! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Christmas is Tiffanie’s favorite holiday, and she starts planning for it way before Halloween, and then reminds me that Christmas is almost here. As a parent, I remember how much work it takes to make a special Christmas for her, so I start planning as well.

Every holiday season I make as many homemade gifts as possible to give to my friends and family, and the staff and friends at Tiffanie’s day care program (for adults with special needs), and this year was no exception. If you are anything like me, throughout the year you find and buy patterns that you hope to make for future projects. This was one of those patterns. Somewhere during my travels, I saw a very small paper pieced Santa ornament measuring 3.5”x3.5” when finished; this is what I had set my sights on for this month’s challenge and this year’s holiday gifts. So, I searched and found the pattern in my “save for later” stash, and as always, planned to review the instructions before starting. As I started to read the instructions, I realized that they were written in French!!! “Oui! Oui!” That’s the only word/phrase I know in French! How could I have not noticed this when I first saw this little gem?! Oh well, it’s not the end of the world. I decided I would figure out how to make it by looking at the pictures. Remember before when I said that sewing little pieces of fabric together is something that makes me antsy? Well, I decided to challenge myself, yet again, and for this month’s challenge I chose to make something small. And just like before, it turned out to be a much bigger project than I anticipated and planned for.

I started off making the Santa ornament to fulfill the requirement for this month’s challenge, which was a breeze. After making one ornament, I felt that it just wasn’t enough, and I made two more. Then, looking at the three Santa ornaments… meh. They were missing something. After some creative thinking I concluded that the Santas needed something to make them lively, fun, and festive, and decided to make garland with them by attaching them to a ribbon. Hmm, still not quite right. I wanted them to have a “WOW” factor. Being true to myself as a self-proclaimed scrappy queen, I thought about the left-over scraps of the Kathy Engle fabrics from last month’s challenge.

Focusing on the empty ribbon between the Santas, I decided to cut 6”x3/8” strips of the scraps and added them to the empty spaces between the Santas. Ok! I’m making progress. It’s looking better but not quite there… what is it missing? I then remembered a box of odds and ends that a friend had given to me and knew there had to be something in there that would bring the garland to life. Lo and behold! That little box turned out to be a treasure chest of goodies! I found some brightly colored bells to add to the tops of the Santas hats, and there it was! The “WOW” factor! The final touch… and it was finished!!!

This was a fun “little” project and took about 4 hours to make, start to finish! With that in mind there was no way I was going to make garland for each of my sewing sisters; that would take 4 days. So instead, I decided to make 1 Santa ornament for each of my sewing sisters, not an entire garland. That should be easy enough. But wait! Tiffanie got home from school, saw what I was doing, and of course she wanted me to make ornaments for the program directors at her day care program. Gasp!

So here is the breakdown – I started my project planning to make 1 ornament for my December challenge and it morphed into 3 ornaments, and then into 1 garland. Then I decided to make 12 more ornaments, one for each of my sewing sisters, and then 4 more were added for the program directors at Tiffanie’s day care program!

Phew! This is doable! According to my calculations it should only take about an hour to complete each ornament. Using the leftover scraps and donated items to make my annual homemade holiday gifts was underway… full steam ahead!

The next day came, and I started working on the 16 ornaments I added to my challenge, and things were moving right along. Then Tiffanie got home from school and handed me a tiny, little note. I opened up the note and the number 35 was written on it. Quite puzzled, I looked up at her. You know what? She had come up with a “bright idea” of her own (it must be hereditary). She proceeded to tell me that she went to school and asked the director “how many other clients are in this program?” So, back to this tiny, little note – 35 is the number of clients in her program. If you haven’t guessed it by now, she wanted me to make a Santa ornament for everyone in the program. I just about fell off my chair! “Really?!!! There are 35 clients in your program??!”  After coming to my senses, I asked her to tell me the names of the ones that she knew. This list was a lot shorter, with about 10 or so people. What a relief, or so I thought.

For the next few days, she came home from school and gave me another name to add to the list, which in the end had reached 28. Have you been doing the math? So now I need to make 44 more ornaments! But then I remembered that I had added 5 more sewing friends to my list for a total of 49!

What on earth was I thinking?! I started with 1 small ornament for the December challenge, and it turned into a monster, kind of like the movie Gremlins! When you feed Mogwais after midnight, they turn into monsters… little Gremlins with big teeth!

I’m not sure how many days I’ve been working on these tiny ornaments, but I know it’s been more than a few, and the hours are adding up and I’m still not done piecing them.

After I finish piecing the last 3 ornaments, I will take a final count to make sure I made enough before I start cutting the ribbons, adding the Hobbs batting, then stitching the fronts and backs together. Once this part is done, I’ve crossed the finish line!

I am a huge fan of gluing things to make them stay in place while I am sewing.

I was gifted some really cute little boxes made out of recycled Christmas cards which I will use to put the ornaments in. I will first wrap the ornaments in tissue paper, then put them into their own box and secure the box with a ribbon and bow. The good news is that I only spent about $12.00 on this project, which was for the pretty, sparkly eyes and glue. You can’t have Christmas without lots of sparkle!

The holidays are about getting creative and giving to others, so this year is no different than any other year for me, except for the fact that I have so many wonderful people in my life to give to no matter how long it takes to make the gifts.

There are no two ornaments alike except for the football teams.

In addition to the fabrics supplied by Island Batik, I want to thank our sponsors,

Aurifil threads, I used #2800 on this project, which is a very light green.

Hobbs 80/20 batting.

Schmetz Needles.

I’d also like to acknowledge Clover for their 0.45mm Flower Head pins that usually bend instead of breaking when going over them with the presser foot.

So, what did I learn this month?

My homemade gifts, although they might be small, are made from my heart and given with love.

Having a lot of people in my life is worth every minute it takes when making something special for them.

Making small ornaments didn’t help get rid of my stash of scraps as much as I thought it would. As a matter of fact, I can’t even tell that I used any of my scraps!

My daughter wanting to give a gift to everyone she knows means that I have done my job as a mom.

Until next month, what is on your sewing table today?

Victoria aka Tori