Things I did last year: Christmas crafts

A tradition from my childhood, and one I love to keep up, is to make gifts. Sometimes this involves making food such as jam (jelly if you’re in the USA), mustard, relish and often sweet treats, to give as hampers. It also involves making other stuff. Sometimes I start months in advance. One year I make 13 (check) Christmas stockings for the family. All colourwork. And I started in August so I could get them all done. Each one was different and I think they’re still being used.

Last year it involved a range of things.

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Handmade Soap

< I made soap.

These three are a few of the handmade soaps. From the top: lavender, rose and  honey. The top two are in a clear glycerin base and the bottom in a milk glycerin base.

These were fun to make. I made them with Mum and we used silicon muffin pan for the molds. It created these lovely neat smallish soaps that were perfect for sending overseas. I made sure not to put organic material in the ones pictured. We did make some that had dried lavender, dried rose petals (both from the garden) and rolled oats in them.

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Soap Sack & Flannel Set

I knitted a soap bag and flannel set to go with the soap.

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Soap Sack

 

 

 

Flannel
Flannel

The design for the pair is Silvermist Bath Set by Rosemary (Romi) Hill. I knitted them out of Bendigo Woollen Mills 8ply cotton in Teal that I had in my stash.

It’s a pattern I would definitely knit again, but I’d need to find larger cakes of soap to fill the sack out!

 

Citrus Coasters Set 1
Citrus Coasters Set 1

 

I made several sets of felt coasters. The first set I made, pictured above, I decided I needed as many colours as possible. In this first set I used what I could get easily. I made a lime, lemon, orange and pink grapefruit. Then I got creative. The third one from the left is orange and pink, and the one of the far left is watermelon. You can’t see it in this photo, but it has a dark green backing.

I love how these turned out, so I made three more sets!

3 Citrus Coasters Sets
3 Citrus Coasters Sets

I took the advice from a friend, Alisa, and what she does with her quilting. I cut out all the pieces needed for each coaster and packaged each colour up with all the bits it needed in its own bag. It took a few nights to sort this out but it was worth it. In the end I was able to pull out a bag a night and sew the three coasters that were in there.

Citrus Coasters by colour
Citrus Coasters by colour

After awhile they became less fiddly as I worked out easier ways to pin and sew them together. You can find the pattern for these coasters over at the Purl Bee.

I adore how they look together. Even if there is no such thing as blue or purple citrus. I even have enough felt leftover to make myself a set.

Citrus Coaster Stack
Citrus Coaster Stack

 

 

 

I  love how some of these photos turned out! Especially that stack of rainbow colour.