Sarah from the studio has been busy with her Handmade Gifting and has made three beautiful projects. Two of them use one of our new fabrics from our Japanese Collection and the third uses our pretty pre-cut Liberty fabric Christmas shapes.
Sarah talks about her Christmas sewing projects. “Christmas has come around quickly for me this year and the opportunity to sew has arisen – something I love to do. For one of my makes I decided to think outside the box. When it comes to Christmas, I often make decorations and things for my home but this year I have made a Christmas shopping bag. For a while now I have been admiring the Japanese prints in the studio and have chosen Japanese Style Printed Cotton Toto Lavender 104 to make a Tote bag. I lined it with calico to give it a little extra strength and rigidity. I cut two rectangles the size I wanted the bag to be and took a two inch square out of the bottom corners. Having sewn the side and base seams I sewed the corners across the diagonals, a technique learned from an Alice Caroline bag pattern I have used previously. I did the same with the calico lining and attached the two together.”
“Another one of my festive makes is a Christmas doorstop. I cut an isosceles triangle with an eight inch base and sides of nine inches making it just over eight inches tall. I cut three of these and an eight inch equilateral triangle for the base. I used Lichen Oakshott fabric and appliquéd pre cut Christmas animal shapes from our collection onto each side. Having sewn the triangles together, I filled the pyramid with rice and hand stitched it closed. It will do a great job of keeping a glass door in my house safely open when I have family running around on Christmas Day.”
“My family does a Secret Santa each year and this year is no different. However, this year all of the presents have to be home made. This made me think about my final make. I chose the same fabric as the shopping bag but enhanced it with Oakshott Violet I have made a cushion cover with a stripe of contrasting plain fabric and a simple envelope back. I measured my cushion, decided how big I wanted the stripe to be and cut the fabric accordingly. The back overlaps by three inches so each of the back panels measured half the length of the cushion plus three inches and seam allowances. It is a simple but effective way to create something beautiful which I hope will be well received on Christmas Day.”
