Happy New Year and Finished Projects!

Happy New Year, Everyone! :)

Our family had Christmas in Wisconsin again this year and except for the part about passing illnesses to one another, we had a wonderful time! We brought along a few things that I made for my boys, my nieces and nephew and something for my future sister-in-law, Chelsea.

First up, some fun little tutus and ballets skirts for my nieces. These are mostly no-sew, just a lot of tulle cutting and tying. The elastic is sewn together, but you can also use ribbon (or so I hear). Here they are after completion...

...and here they are on the girls! Malia is on the left and Kaelana is on the right. I had taken pictures of Zeke trying them on so I could send them to my mom to give her an idea what they would look like. Poor little Zeke loved them SO much, he insisted there had to be boy tutus, too and he wants one in Spiderman colors. Any ideas? lol

These are some simpler ballet skirts made with ribbon, tulle and thread. Nothing over the top about these, just simple and pretty, made prettier by my beautiful nieces.

This one was so fun, I just had to make it for my nephew August. The pattern, found here shows X's for eyes and that creeped out my sister, so I went with a plain dot. I used Caron Simply Soft and it worked out great. I am already thinking of a few other kids who would look cute in this hat, so I'm pretty sure I'll have to keep an eye out for some yarn sales and stock up!

Here it is on Aug Dawg! Just love this hat!!! And he knew what it was before he even finished pulling it out of the paper, smart little dude.

Meet Chelsea, my lovely sister-in-law to be. Chelsea is definitely on the tall side. I don't know the numbers here, even though I'm sure she has told me, but I am thinking somewhere in the 6' range. Anyway, tall equals long and my brother Nate told me she has a hard time finding hoods that fit her correctly, so I knew I wanted to make her a nice, hooded scarf, despite the fact I couldn't find a pattern I liked. I measured, tweeked and figured out which stitches I wanted to use and finally came up with this. Doesn't she look adorable?!?! You can't tell from this picture, but I tried to make it long enough for her, over 6', so it wouldn't look puny on her. It's nice and soft too, made out of JoAnn's Sensations Rainbow Classic in white. I hope she is able to get a lot of use out of it!

And finally, my own kids, including Phin in his (late) debut on here. Here they are modeling the hooded towels that I made for them. A friend of mine sent me a link one day for hooded towels that were simply made out of hand towels and bath towels and then personalized with fleece. Sounded easy enough, but tell that to my sewing machine! Lots of layers to sew through meant it took a little work, but they turned out very nice and I'll probably be making them again sometime, maybe try doing some edging or something. These are all made the same size with a decent sized bath towel and a halfed hand towel for the hood.

And that's about it. I have one more gift going out in the mail tomorrow that wasn't intended as a Christmas gift, it's more of a really, really late new baby gift for a friend of mine. :) Once she gets it, I'll be sure to get pictures up. I'm already thinking ahead to Christmas 2010 and how I'd like to put a few more people on my list, so it'll be a much earlier start for me. In the meantime, I need to figure out what to do next. My sister and I both want hooded scarves now, so that's on the list. More fish hats perhaps or a pair of longies for Phin? Or maybe those socks I never finished for Josh. Yes, those socks. I know, I know... I still want to do all the things on my "thinking about doing" list, too, and that list is growing in my head every time I go looking through patterns. Well, it is a new year and I'm going to try and do at least one project a month and see what I can get done. I should probably put that on my calendar or something so I don't forget! :)

I guess that means I need to get started on something new so I can have a post up by January 31st! Until then, have a great start to the new year!!!