Holiday Happenings, Part 1

While looking through some recently uploaded photos, I realized there are a few holiday related items I never shared -- I think all the painting right after Christmas distracted me.  Although it's nearly mid-January, I figured this would be the last chance to elaborate before you think I'm a total weirdo for talking about such things.  First up is a rundown of all the gifts I decided to make by hand this year.  I've never made so many in one year before and I'm pretty shocked and slightly proud that I got them all finished on time.  I showed a sneak peak just before Christmas, so I thought I'd share the actual gifts and tutorials now that they're all given out and I can't ruin any surprises.

My sister had asked for some make-up brushes this year, so I thought I'd get those for her and go one step further and make her a brush roll-up to store them in. I did some google tutorial searching and came across this step by step tutorial from Sew4Home. I choose this one because 1) it looked nice, 2) the dimensions fit the brushes I'd purchased, and 3) it would give me a chance to practice my binding skills since I'd be doing it on a quilt very soon.  The rounded corners gave me a bit more trouble than I'd expected and I need more practice with that, but overall, I'd say it turned out pretty well.

 Folds up neat and tidy...

Plenty of storage for any brush you could ever own...

 And different sized compartments if you had anything larger to add in...

Once I finished the roll-up and had extra fabric to use, I decided no brush roll-up would be complete without a matching make-up case. I did more google research and came across this awesome tutorial by Skip to My Lou.  It's the perfect size to store all of my sister's make-up and her new brush roll-up.

Now that those were done, I moved on to dog collars and leashes.  My sister has been begging me to make her two puppies OU themed collars and Christmas seemed like the right time to finally give in and whip some up.  I've been making collars and leashes by just mimicking ones I already owned.  One day, I will try to get a step-by-step post up including where you can find all the necessary hardware. For now though, here are my OU themed collars for little Bentley and Bella.

There are three collars in the pic above -- Boyfriend's grandmother loves red and has a sweet little Maltese, so she got her very own collar and leash set as well. My sister likes to walk her two on the same leash and use a split lead to hook on each of their collars so by the end, I had actually made three collars, two leashes and one split lead.

And here are Bentley and Bella modeling their new gifts.  Somehow I had some extra time before Christmas to make a little bow tie for Bentley and a flower for Bella and Angelina. All of them have snaps and can easily be removed.

This next gift was made around Thanksgiving, but I figure it's close enough to the holidays to count :)  They were made for and inspired by boyfriend's love for Words with Friends...

I caught Shiloh snuggled up by them at one point and it spurred a whole puppy photo shoot -- I'll spare all the pictures I have and just share a couple.

Here's little Nolan.  The look on his face says, "Seriously, that black thing pointed at me again... can I just be done?!"

And then little Shi, who's always been so good at posing as long as you make a high-pitched noise right before snapping the pic.

This was another project that I made up as I went and put together as practice before making the quilt -- I used a similar technique when I attached the name on the quilt. So, it is on the list for a follow up 'how to' post.

And last, but certainly not least, was the quilt for boyfriend's niece. I shared my process in an earlier post but had not quilted or bound it yet. For me, the quilting was a little frustrating but the binding went surprisingly well -- originally it was the part I was most afraid of!  I followed instructions from The Polkadot Chair's quilt-a-long for the quilting part and will definitely be doing the same on the next one. For the binding, I found these instructions and they worked perfectly for me!

Since she's only 3, I put together this patch on the back so she'll remember when she received it.

Santa actually brought her a pink princess bed for Christmas so the quilt was gifted at the perfect time!  I am so pleased with it and ready to make more -- just need a little time to rest my sewing hands :)

linking up to The Polkadot Chair