I had a happy time making things for Christmas and have already posted some of my early makes here.

I made my grandson a few tops and trousers. I love the Brindille and Twig Ringer tee, which is a free pattern and so useful. This tee is made from part of a roll of circular knit that Sarah from Pattern Union got for me from an estate giveaway. It’s beautifully soft and I’ve made lots of things from it.

I decided to appliqué a dog on the front using the same fabric as the trousers. All went well until about halfway through when the fabric got sucked down into the bobbin housing and destroyed my machine’s timing. It also put a hole in the fabric, which I covered with a ball. I cut the dog on my Cricut and you can see where I used a different stitch (and machine) for half the dog.

The trousers are the Puperita Little Stars pattern. I love the pockets but they somehow look like they belong on the back, so I put a Made in 2023 label in the back so my stepdaughter knows which way they should be put on. The car fabric is left over from his grandfather’s boardshorts, reported on further down. These should really be reversible but I thought they’d be too hot if I lined them.

I made two more Ringer tees. One from some knit that I indigo dyed – very unevenly. I appliquéd a dinosaur on this one using a scrap of green cotton. The other tee shirt is made from a gorgeous zebra printed knit and I used black knit for the bands.

The last pair of trousers for L are another Puperita pattern, this time the Very Casual Shorts and Pants pattern. i was drawn to this pattern because it looks a bit grown up and it also uses woven fabric. I did iron them, but realised I hadn’t photographed them so had to drag them out of his stocking so I could show you.

I made two sock monkeys from the wonderful tutorial by Robyn at Four Patch Textiles. I am still using socks from the pack I bought when I started this adventure. These two are called Rosie and Buzzy, for obvious reasons.

Rosie was given to the baby daughter of a friend of my son and she and Buzzy had an emotional parting. 

However Buzzy has been getting lots of cuddles so he’s surviving.

I made Mark a couple of tee shirts for Christmas, using the Merchant and Mills Tee Shirt pattern. The one on the left is made from beautiful stretch linen from Knitwit Fabrics. Once again, I forgot to take a photo at the time so it’s looking a bit rumpled. The second one is made from a piece of cotton shirting that was too small to make an actual shirt, but is a perfect size for a long sleeve tee. This is an ideal, lightweight shirt for keeping the sun off his arms whilst he’s driving.

I also made him a pair of boardies from fabric I’ve had in my stash for years. I think it originally came from Tessuti fabrics and it’s quick dry fabric, so probably contains a fair bit of synthetic fibre.

I used a 1980s pattern, Butterick 4664. I think this came from an op shop as I have no idea who Jill B is. This is a terrific pattern and I’ve made most of the views shown – except view E!

I made enough reversible Christmas crowns to give one to each family member who came to lunch, plus two for the littlies. All the fabric is from stash. I saved a lot of time by cutting them from doubled fabric and then using the inverse of the points by cutting the next lot upside down. I had the biggest mess whilst I was making them and got to the point where I couldn’t continue before cleaning it up.

All the ribbons are recycled, most of them came from around parcels or from shopping bags.

Each side is interfaced and I used scraps of interfacing to try and reduce my pile. It didn’t make a dent!

Sewing the crowns killed my lovely Elna Stella. Not sure what’s happened but off to the repair shop it will go. I didn’t get any photos of us all wearing our crowns but there was a point when that happened – until it got too hot. What did surprise me was how much Miss G loved hers. She kept it on until it was time for swimming, but I think there was a stage where she thought it was a blindfold!

I decided to substitute treat boxes for crackers. I put very lame dad jokes and treats in each one and put them on the lunch table.

At the end I retrieved them all and stacked them for next year. I expected them to lay flat for easy storage, but that wasn’t to be!

So that’s another Christmas successfully wrapped up. We had a wonderful day and made some beautiful memories for us all.