Hand made Christmas gifts

Photo Calendars for the family from 2010

I have always made Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews to remind them of how much I love them. I could go out and buy them all gift cards, but I am loathe to do it.  I feel strongly that I want to maintain the tradition of hand made gifts. Over the years I have made pillows, pillowcases, fabric bags, luggage tags, photo calendars and mug mats.
The inspiration for the gift usually comes to me at some point in December, and then I work like crazy to finish them before December 25th. I know that is how it goes and I'm used to it. Each year as I repeat my tradition, I enjoy it more, and stress about it less. It always gets done!

This year I decided to make little fabric bowls from my brother's shirts. I wrote about deconstructing his shirts in this blog post earlier this year, and I felt the time was right for me to be able to create something with this fabric. 

I cut the shirts into 1" strips, wrapped the fabric around clothesline cording, and created fabric bowls. (You can read more information about making the bowls here.) I had a bit of an issue with the thread tension when making the first bowl - it was a terrible mess. I had to really fiddle with the sewing machine settings to fix the tension. 

This is how the thread should look on the outside of the bowl. Once that problem was solved, the rest of the bowls were built easily.





I made one flat mat to send in the mail to a good friend of my brother's and hope it will be a happy surprise.

The gifts for the nieces and nephews are bowls made from my brother's shirts, and they are filled with much love and many happy memories. Altogether I wrapped 100 feet of cording to make these bowls! Here's the group of them all ready to wrap!
Did you make some gifts for Christmas this year?