Christmas Treasures!

Christmas has always been a pretty low-key event for us; we do love to give gifts and have always stressed the importance of giving things that are meaningful and useful.

This year I made my daughter a reusable grocery bag. This was really a last-minute thing (I mean it... we were joking Christmas Eve morning about her being a "starving college student" and immediately a design popped into my head, and that afternoon I started work on the embroidery design, and I finished the bag at about 11pm.


Inside the top back edge of the bag, there's a small zippered pocket to hold her grocery club card, along with four gift cards to the grocery store she uses in Swannanoa (Ingall's). The bag is canvas, with a contrasting cotton twill bottom, cotton webbing straps, and an embroidery design done in Embird (love their Font Engine!).

I received several sewing related gifts, too. From my son, I got two fabulous sewing books. I had never heard of either of them, but he took the time to go to the bookstore and find two books I actually did not have in my library!



Hand-embroidery is something I've never really gotten into, mostly because all the design books I've seen are heavy into the old-fashioned styles and designs. Not this one! There are some really funky designs, and they even include transfers so you can create your own embroidered masterpieces.



This is another really cool book, with instructions and inspiration for painting, dying, stamping and printing fabric to create your own original designs. I've always wanted to learn silkscreening, and the book has instructions for it (and it'll be cheaper than buying a Yudu machine at Michael's).

Finally, my wonderful husband gave me this:

I had mentioned it to him some time ago, after seeing one at a PMB Users Group meeting. I thought he could go to the local Bernina dealer and pick one up. Turns out it wasn't that easy: he actually had to contact the Wenger factory in Switzerland and buy it directly from them!!

This tool is simply fabulous:

There's a chalk marking tool, scissors, rotary cutter, seam gauge, eyelet cutter, buttonhole gauge, thread cutter, needle threader, mini screwdriver, magnifying glass, knit snag tool, and I'm sure there are other features hidden in there that I haven't found yet.

I hope all of you who celebrate Christmas had a wonderful day!

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