Handmade Christmas Challenge

As Tracey at Knicky Knacks has pointed out, there is probably only a couple more months before Christmas items begin to appear in the shops. When you are plannning on making ALL of your Christmas gifts, it's wise to begin early.

Hopefully by playing along with the Handmade Christmas Challenge, I'll be able to maintain some sort of creative Christmas momentum and get at least some of my Christmas gifts made before the week before Christmas!!

First on the list: Bucket Hats.

You can never have enough hats for kids I say, so I've been collected a stash of fabric with mostly non-directional prints to make a bunch of bucket hats as gifts. Thankfully we only really exchange gifts for children each year, which means I can be pretty wild about fabric choices.

As you can see I have the Make it Perfect Lazy Day hat pattern to work with. Hopefully sometime in the next month I'll make my a prototype hat before cutting into this stash and begin the hats for gifts.

Next on the list: Girly Kaftans or beach shirts

I think this pattern is just adorable!! It's a Sis Boom e-pattern, which I purchased on sale from Quilthome and as far as e-patterns go, this is probably the best I've ever seen. It's very detailed with over 40 pages of instructions and sizing charts, then each size shirt is drafted on its own which means you don't have to trace anything, you can just print, stick and cut. Better yet it is drafted to size 12, which means I should get alot of use out of it.

Each pattern also has a bunch of variations for hem length, sleeve type (short, cuffed, long) then specifically how long you want each sleeve (16 inches, 17 inches, etc.) - very very detailed.

So I've measured my two neices and printed off their patterns. Now I just need to decide which fabrics to use - I'm thinking the peach Amy Butler print (bottom left) for one and the Anna Maria Horner print (top left) for the other. I think the Jennnifer Pagaletti print (middle pink) will be a kaftan for Adele, which will possibly also be my prototype before I make the others.

Till next time....