It’s all about the cushions

Once again the week has well and truly run away with me and it’s Friday again already. It’s been a hectic week with finishing off Christmas shopping🎄, our usual toddler groups and meeting up with a friend. I’ve just got one more present to buy and then that’s the kids done. Phew! I love Christmas and do like to be organised with getting all the gifts bought and wrapped early on so I can relax and enjoy the season. First stop this weekend is the decorations going up and hopefully a trip to a local Christmas sparkle event (depending on the weather), together with the arrival of our ‘kindness elf’. Our elf is a little less cheeky than most and encourages the children to do various acts of kindness in the lead up to Christmas.

What with everything that’s been going on this week I haven’t got as much crafting done, but I’ve still had my sewing machine on the go. I’ve finished off the tortoise pincushion from the Cath Kidston book for L and I’ve made a start on two cushion covers for my bedroom that I have designed myself. The pincushion was actually fairly fiddly once I got on to the sewing machine parts as all the pieces were fairly small and it's not something I used to, but L was really excited with it. I have to admit it is pretty cute, given that it's basically been made with some leftover scraps I had from some other projects. As it's such a fiddly thing to make up it may be that I practice a few more to perfect them - you can never have too many pincushions, right?!?

The cushion covers are one of those items that have been on my to do list for a while, but I wasn’t set on how I wanted to do them. Then I decided to keep it simple and rather than cut a number of squares and producing a quilted front, I decided to go with 2 inch wide strips, with some top stitching to give the idea of quilting without the wadding and additional time it would take. I’ve used what was left of the fat quarters that I used for the sewing machine cover and the quilt topper for my bedroom so everything matches which makes me happy.  I just need to find some material to use for the backing fabric and then they’ll be finished. Given that it’s the festive season though and I’m planning on avoiding town for the next few weeks, they may still be on my ‘work in progress’ pile for a little while yet.

One of the five minute jobs I managed to fit in this week though is the personalisation of the Christmas sacks for the kids. Just some really simple back stitch to add each child’s name with some DMC floss that I had leftover from a cross stitch I designed a few years ago for my wonderful inlaws for their Jade anniversary. The Christmas sacks were something I picked up last year when Toys R Us was closing down. The kids have no idea that I have them, so everything is crossed that they will like them although I'm very aware that Santa and the elves will be getting all the credit. I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out, although it wouldn’t surprise me if the boys still get confused about which is their sack!

So that’s me for the week. I’m still hunting for a big project to have running in the background and I’m hoping that something that will jump out at me over the next few days. I’m also hoping that there will be some craft stalls at the Christmas sparkle event this weekend which might give me some inspiration. I have to admit though that the return of Kirsty’s handmade Christmas has helped that along quite a bit and there is a huge part of me that is itching to get hold of some fake snow for the windows.

Until next week,

M x