Inching towards Christmas

Christmas inchies were the order of the day today as I have two swaps of these, both of which need to be in by early December. I know it's nowhere near early December, but I am away until the 17th, and then there's the mailing time to the US - so I thought if I had them done before I went, I could post them while in the US... So that's what I did today. These pics show them packed up and ready to go - one is doing sets of five, the other is pairs & they have to have an eyelet and be decorated on both sides, so I have added some nice Christmas sequins to the backs of these (but haven't photographed the backs). Here are the sets I did - mostly snowflakes, no one will be surprised to see!




The left set is a purple snowflake fabric background, with variegated purple thread edging and blue or white plastic snowflakes. The ones on the right have a white and blue snowflake fabric background, with decorative stitching around the edges and snowflake brads in blue, white or silver.




And here we have a blue snowflake batik background (yes, I do like snowflake fabrics - how'd you guess?) with transparent "snowflakes" which are actually buttons and only have 5 arms, not six, but I think they work anyway, don't you? On the right, the purple fabric again, with some silver foil on it, then snowflake sequins in various colours. Both of these have silver metallic thread around the edge - straight stitched on the left and zig zag on the right.




And then I decided to move to stars and do a few in more traditional Christmas colours - a green leaf background (I think it's a Debbie Mumm fabric) with gold wooden stars, and on the right a gold shimmery fabric, with red silk satin stitch to edge and on the back a very pretty Christmas print with mistletoe and pointsettias. And of course, red and gold star jewels on the front.





And to keep the inchie theme, I got these in the post today - orange and black stamped inchies, from the October swap on Joanne's blog. I have an idea for something fun to do with them for my friends who are really into Hallowe'en, but that's for next year. At the moment, they are just adorning my pinboard. And, not an inchie, but lovely nonetheless is this "J" card, from Melinda - J is for Jack. Great idea, Melinda - thanks!





Finally, I have been promising Sarah that I would help her make a pencil roll for her coloured pencils for a while now, and we finally had a time we could both do it this afternoon. She did a lot of it, but got tired of sewing the lines where the pencils go after a while, so I finished it off. She has a set of 24 very nice artist's colouring pencils, so there are 24 spaces, then a larger space for sharpener, rubber, small ruler, etc and then two more pencil spaces for regular pencils at the end; it has a ribbon to tie. Pretty AND practical. I've been making a lot of useful things lately - whatever has got into me? lol.