Handmade Christmas Gifts

This Christmas season I heard a lot about homemade gifts being given to family members for Christmas. The idea is not new, and I'd heard about others' experiences with it before, so I wanted to try to make a gift for each person in our family this year. I didn't succeed in my goal, but I did make a couple of gifts that I was happy about.

While reading a blog post one day, I got the idea for what I wanted to make for Eric: "our story."

I loved the example on the post, so I used it as a template to make my own. It took a while to get the story just how I wanted it worded, but I was excited about how it turned out.

The other gift I made was a rag quilt for Ollie.

I made one for each of the girls, and I wanted to do one for Henrik, but one of my flute students made a quilt as a gift for Henrik, so I didn't take the time and effort to make him one. I still had the fabric, though, so I decided to do it for Ollie. I cut all the squares a week after he was born when my mom was still in town. But of course I saved everything else for the last minute. It was all sewn by Christmas, but I did the little snips and washed it a few days later.

I wanted to make some fabric rosettes to put on headbands for the girls, but I just didn't get to it. Maybe next year I'll start earlier and actually have a handmade gift for everyone under the tree Christmas morning. But there were still plenty of smiles to go around this year.