Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post. I am bowled over by all the love! Thanks especially to everyone who is praying for us. Again, it's a great comfort to know we can rely on all that grace being sent our way!
(To those of you who wondered, it's scheduled as a seven-month deployment, though of course that's approximate and could always change!)
And now, I'm going to follow my mom's lead and show you some of the handmade gifts I gave and received over Christmas, starting with this fabric memory game I made for my sweet niece/goddaughter Ann, who is almost two.
She is a very busy little girl, and I thought she would enjoy looking at the different pretty designs, organizing them, and (eventually) actually playing a little Memory with them!
I got the idea from a link someone I was following posted on Pinterest, which sent me to this post on the Purl Bee website. What a great idea! They used felt as the backing, which I didn't have, but I did have some plain muslin.
The colorful squares came from my stash; I used iron-on interfacing on both them and the muslin to make sure they'd hold up, and then cut the patterned ones (two of each, of course) with pinking shears.
It was fun to choose the fabric, making sure I had lots of different colors and patterns. There are 15 pairs, so 30 squares in all. I got to use some that I love, but only have a little bit left of -- one of my favorite parts of projects that use little pieces from my stash!
I was afraid that if I just used the white on the back and the color on the front, I wouldn't be able to turn them inside-out precisely enough, and would end up with bits of the colored fabric peeking around to the other side. Which would, of course, defeat the purpose!
(I remember when we were little, we had this wonderful wooden memory game that we played with all the time. At some point, one of the younger kids took a marker to some of the pieces, and it wasn't long before we had memorized the markings on the backs. We knew exactly where one of the frogs and one of the horses was as soon as we started, and it was always a race to snatch up those pairs first.)
So instead I used the muslin to make little square tiles and sewed the colorful squares on top. It was a little more time-consuming, and I think next time I'll see if I can figure out a more efficient way of doing it (I do think the felt would be nice). But it was a fun little project and I love the way they turned out.
And, of course, she needs a little bag to keep them all in! (Among other things, I wouldn't want to sabotage my relationship with her mother by giving her a gift with thirty pieces and no container!)
I failed to take photos of the other gifts I made, which included a little quilt made from thrifted fabric for Sukie and John, and the owl potholder for my mom, which you already saw.
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| Luckily my mom took photos. |
Several of you asked for a tutorial, which is very sweet of you! However, I think I might need to make a few more myself before I attempt such a thing, otherwise the tutorial would go something like this: "Sew this part together wrong. Take it apart again. Sew it together wrong again. Tear it apart again. Think about it really, really hard before sewing it together only a little bit wrong...."
I did really enjoy making it, despite my struggles, so maybe I'll have to try again and let you know how it goes!
