Christmas Sewing for 2012

Popping in to talk about what I've been up to in the last week or so.  How are your Christmas preparations going?

I just have one more Christmas present to finish this year.  Only two handmade gifts on my list for 2012. I would love to make more, but I want to make sure I'm giving things that people want to get and not just what I want to give!  Like many families, we do exchange gifts on both sides.  My husband has ten siblings and I have six siblings, but we only had to shop for nine exchange gifts this year.

For our baby girl niece whom I needed a small gift, I put together a large tag toy. (I have a post about tag toys here.)

What did you say?  You've seen this fabric before?  It's like the never ending 1/4 yard of fabric!

I try to use high-contrast, bright-colored fabric for a baby things.  Here's the back, more girly:

And for my seven-year-old neice who apparently has twenty million baby dolls and can't get enough of baby-doll stuff, I'm in the process of putting together three baby doll outfits using McCalls' pattern M4338.

You can see the pattern in the corner of this pic.  I'm actually really glad to have an excuse to have this pattern because it's a great staple for those of us with little girls!  I'm trying to make a cohesive little gift of three mix-and-match sort of outfits, so I chose coordinating fabrics -- three different (printed) ginghams, light pink eyelet, and pink polka dot.

The first item is that pink dress.

I used eyelet to cut down on hemming time for the skirt and sleeves.  I also cheated a little bit.  I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but I used the selvage edge of the white lining as the hem so that I didn't have to do anything with that layer either.  Less thread and hemming!  Because I know the recipient and nobody is paying for this little outfit, I don't feel guilty cutting a corner or two.

The second outfit is a green check dress, reversible hat, and reversible diaper.

The pattern doesn't give instructions to make the hat reversible, but I couldn't help myself.  More options for play, right?

As it turns out, not all baby doll heads are created equal.  We have a bunch of them in our toy bin and on one doll, the hat fit like this:

But on another doll the same length, it fit perfectly:

This was the smaller hat size, so from now on, I'll stick to the larger size.  Better too big than too small.

This hat and diaper set keeps disappearing from my sewing table and ending up in the hands of my five-year-old.  Maybe she needs some doll clothes of her own!

The last outfit is a blue check jumper with a white collared shirt underneath.  If I get everything done, maybe I'll put together a pair of bloomers for that pink dress.

For anyone who is considering learning to sew, let me tell you -- it is a great money-saver for those of us with limited means!  Using fabric from my stash (the green check is from a valence, the blue check is from a sheet, and the pink check is from a curtain -- all fabric people gave me), I've put less than $5 into this gift!