glasses cases

Good evening ladies!  First of all, a very happy Christmas / Channukah / Saturday to you all!

It's 6pm on Christmas eve here, I finally finished Christmas at 4, then went to visit my aunty before coming home for a quick blog catch up then some baked camembert in front of the TV with Mr CA.  The relief to have everything finished!  I few items got removed from my list, but I got most things done.

This morning I finished sewing up the glasses cases I'd been working on. I started this weeks ago.  One for my mum, one for the aunty I visited today, one for my dad and one for my FIL.  Here's the fabrics I started with.  Nope, sorry, can't find the photo.  It was here, but guess what?  Blogger stole my post!  I'd copied and pasted it into Word before trying to publish it, but Word stole the photos!!

I started embroidering the pink one.

But it wasn't working so I scrapped it and started again.  This is the red one - taken from a Grace layer cake.  I cut the first panel funny, out of the centre of the fabric (?!) so had to make the other side different.  I hand quilted around the flowers in a gold thread that made me want to scream, but I love the effect! This is my first time hand quilting, so there's another LANT!

I did the same on two green panels from the Grace layer cake.  I'd fused fusible fleece to the rear before starting and I love the effect.

I think I showed you the embroidered one the other day and I apparently didn't take a photo of the fourth, so here they are all sewn up.

This is for my FIL and is cross stitched using soluble canvas (another LANT!), I used a pattern from Cross Stitch Cards & Keepsakes.

My aunty's all sewn up.  I'd accidentally cut one of the panels too small - you can see it on the picture above, and no way was I starting again after I'd done all that hand quilting, but it meant it was really hard to sew up as the foot has to go over the front, back, lining and the two sleeves. I ended up hand sewing it.

My mum's didn't present any problems!

And I'm still not happy with the speech bubble on this one, but it's Christmas Eve so I'm not going to sweat it!

I finished a load of presents off yesterday but I don't have photos.  I did 18 sets of cookies in jar mixes, including patterned paper labels and lids, also a set of 6 candles in glass tumblers.  I also made two sets of Reinbeer, found via Pinterest here.

But only took one, really crap photo!  FIL's are random beers, my dad's are special beers from a local micro brewery.  My dad is Chairman of Nottingham CAMRA and real ale is very important to him!

I made a load of air-drying clay tags (LANT 3!), stamped with the names of the recipients, and once again took a really shoddy photo.

And finally I crocheted my brother a bath scrubby alien from this free pattern.  Yes, my brother is 36, not 6, but he'll love it!  I was going to make them for the dads too, but that can wait until father's day.  love the base:

Oh, you can see my hand in the window!  What you can't see is that my eczema has found a whole new lease of life and cracks have formed on my hands.  They bleed.  It's very painful. Damn you eczema. 

Anyway, that's Christmas done.  I don't know when I'll be back, but I suspect it will be pretty soon, for blog reading, if not posting as I'm not sure I'll have anything to post about!  Merry Christmas!