A few more sewing projects

Here are the last few pictures of sewing projects I made for gifts.  Still have one gift to finish so can't show a picture of that yet.  And, I have a few other miscellaneous gifts to show, but these are the sewing ones.

For a little grandson, I decided he needed his own little library tote.  His older siblings have these.  They are made from dish towels and are easy and fun to make. 

I actually bought the dish towel for this while we were visiting their family.  I always give a book when I give a library tote.

If you want to try making some, here's the link:  Little Library Totes .

For my newest little grandson, I had to make a name banner to go along with the Happy Birthday banner I made for his family last year.

Half of the banner

The second half.  I have no idea why these photos are so different in size; maybe because I had to stand far back to get all of "Birthday" in.  This project came from Alicia Paulson's wonderful book Stitched in Time.

I also made a "dogbone" pillow for his mom's birthday which was just after Christmas. 

I was trying to sort of replicate a pillow she already owns which gets a lot of use.  This one turned out to be a bit smaller.

You can see the print sort of coordinates with the pillowcases I made for her and her hubby for Christmas.

Also, I previously showed a couple other sewing projects on my Christmas blog.  One was these little purses.

You can read about them here:  Little Purses.

These are made from the little fabric pouches that some pillowcases come packaged in.  This is the front of the purse.

And this is the back of the purse.  I made these for my two youngest granddaughters.

And then last of all I made some more felt food. 

Orange, cherry and lime felt popsicles

Felt Christmas cookies

You can see more pictures and  read about that here:More Fun with Felt Food.

And there you have (for now) the last of my Christmas sewing projects!

A few more handmade gifts ~ barley hot packs

January 1948 in northern New Hampshire

At our house we love these barley hot packs -- or, as we call them,  simply "barley bags".  They are terrific for soothing sore muscles, cramps, etc.,  or just for warming up a cold bed at night.  In the old days people would heat bricks on the wood stove to serve that latter purpose.  My husband (who is not that old) actually remembers doing this.  Now, heating a barley bag in the microwave can achieve the same result.  You can find the instructions for making them here: How to make barley hot packs.

This Christmas I thought it would be a fine idea to make my two older granddaughters their very own barley bags.  I was right.  They were thrilled and put the hot packs to use that very night.  One hot pack was red plaid:

And one was green plaid:

And I have since made a third one since they thought their mom would like to have one too.

As I mentioned in the directions, I think, over time the barley can take on a scorched aroma.  When that happens, you can open up the place where the bag was hand-stitched shut, dump out the scorched barley, put the empty bag through the washer and dryer, add fresh barley, and stitch it up again.  I just did this with one of ours.  Just like new again!

The pictures can't really convey how warm and cozy these flannel hot packs are.  If it's cold in your neck of the woods, you might want to whip up a few of these!

Reading through the Bible

Again this year, one of my goals is to read through the Bible.  I've done this a number of different times using various methods; you can read about some of them here:  Reading Through the Bible.  I mentioned in that post the staggering statistic that only 5% of Christians have ever read the Bible in its entirety.  That is so hard to believe, when you consider how important God's Word is and how we are commanded to search the scriptures.  For years I was one of the 95% who had not read the Bible through.  Finally I came to the place where I set that as a goal for myself.  That was many years ago, and now I have read it many times over.  Last year I decided not to read through the entire Bible, but just to read through the Gospels repeatedly.  I thought it would be a really good reminder to me of how Jesus handled ministry and the problems of and interactions with people.  It would have been, too, if I had stuck with it, but for whatever reason on the second or third time through I got bogged down in the book of Luke.  So I determined that in 2012 I would read through the entire Bible again.  It's been great!  I'm using a 52-week plan from Revive Our Hearts which breaks the readings down by genre -- prophecy, poetry, history, etc.  It's similar to another plan I've used in the past, but this one is much better organized.  Revive Our Hearts offers a number of free Bible reading plans.  You can check them out here: Bible Reading Plans.  It's still January, not at all too late to jump into reading through God's Word.  You will be glad you did!

Embroidered dish towels

Here's another of the handmade gifts I made this Christmas.  These tea towels were sent to faraway friends who live and work in an RV park on the west coast.  They liked these a lot and have them displayed in their kitchen.  My friend told me she's not using them to dry dishes just yet!

These are just ordinary flour sack towels from Walmart (cut in half and raw edge hemmed).  For the vintage camper design, I used the Camp Out transfers available from Sublime Stitching.  Although the edgier designs on this site don't appeal to me, some of the transfer sets like Camp Out, Forest Friends, etc. are cute.  I have used this camper design a bunch of times and the transfer is still working perfectly.

For the fabric trim, I followed this tutorial at Sew4Home: Fancy Border Tea Towels.  For this project, I chose to use only one fabric for the border.  When I used the same pattern earlier, for trimming bistro towels for my giveaway last fall, I used the two fabrics.  Here is how that looks:

Embroidery is so much fun ... and I love dish towels!  Guess I have simple tastes.

Vintage style pillowcases

 
I thought I would share some of the handmade gifts I sewed for this past Christmas.  A few years ago I found this wonderful tutorial:  How to Make a Vintage-Style Pillowcase
on Pleasant View Schoolhouse
 and loved it.   One neat thing about it is that you can use a more plain or utilitarian fabric for the actual pillowcase and then use a small amount of something more special or fanciful for the trim.

I have made quite a number of these pillowcases for gifts since finding this pattern.  I usually leave off the rickrack, which makes it even easier.  For me the most difficult part of making these is just working with the large expanse of fabric it takes for a pillowcase, and cutting it to the right size.  I made a tracing paper pattern to use, and that does make it easier, but I still struggle with it.   Once the fabric is cut it takes very little time -- between a half hour and an hour -- to put one of these together.  So, here are some of the ones I made this year:

For a two-year-old grandson, a transportation print

With a vintage-y rose border.  I had no idea one could find tea-dyed fabric by the yard, but I found this (the solid) right in Walmart.  The rose print came from there too, from their clearance fabric.  The ribbon came around a box of chocolates and was a perfect match!

And then there are these!  I love this snowy village print!

I am longing to make several sets of these for myself -- maybe even a set for every season.  Perhaps this will be the year I manage to do that!

Turkey Tetrazzini

(Photo by Taste of Home)

I've been meaning to post about this for a good month, but I had plenty of other things to post about in December so decided to wait on sharing the recipe. 

We had a small group (and a large turkey) for Thanksgiving, so we had lots of leftover turkey.  I wanted to make something different, in addition to turkey sandwiches, turkey salad, and of course turkey soup.  I can't believe I've never tried making Turkey Tetrazzini before this year, but apparently I hadn't, as I had to google a recipe for it.  I found a very good one here:  Turkey Tetrazzini at Taste of Home.  We thought this casserole was absolutely delicious, and it is a light recipe as well, though it certainly tastes rich enough.  I used whole wheat spaghetti and it was great.

If you happen to have leftover turkey frozen from the holidays, you might like to try this too!

A blessed New Year to all!

God bless thy year!

Thy coming in, thy going out,

Thy rest,

Thy traveling about,

The rough, the smooth,

The bright, the drear,

God bless thy year!

~ Old English Blessing

 Mr. T and I would like to wish all of my readers and friends a happy, healthy 2012.  Every new year holds challenges, opportunities, blessings, and even heartaches for each one of us.  May this year be one of spiritual growth and encouragement for all of us!