I was invited to join in a moment I just could not spend any time preparing for the event. So I decided to keep it all as simple as possible and see how it goes.

It will be a two days event held in my town - Friday and Saturday. This means I have 3 days for preparation from now on and then a day for arranging and 2 days meeting people.

It is a challange. It will be fun once I do the preparation and get to the actiual show. I am curious to see how I will handle it and what will be the final result.

I played with this set of fabric pieces figuring out what to use them for. I have not decided what to make with them yet. These are just part of the samples and I have too many ideas for them.

This is an evening picture again. And I have just noticed the bright thread that was photographed there, but I will keep  - it absolutely authentic with the thread.

My customers sent me this marvelous picture of the wedding quilt they ordered few months ago. We came up with the design together. They knew what they want. I have not met them or the wedding couple and enjoyed the prоcess a lot. It was all made with great care and packed and sent just in time for the wediing. I knew it was well received. But when I received this picture and have a look at it now, with the lady wearing natural colours and really great soxs … It all looks so warm and natural. The quilt has a life of its own. And I am happy I was part of its very beginning.

My kid borrowed my desk this week. So nothing crafty to show now  but the constructing aids I made. Only 3 shown here, but I made a lot.

It is not a great photo as it was taken late in the evening after all the boxes were ready and filled with the bricks.

If you are like me, you will be happy to see that Sew, Mama, Sew! has started a 2nd Handmade Holidays campaign this year. Click on the “Handmade Holidays” banner at  the right column of my blog, to be part of the holiday fun!

I have not started the actual work yet. And will do so today. So it is appropriate time to share my way of handling big holiday issues.

I love presents and preparing them. But choosing and buying or preparing can be hard, so I start early. I keep a list of all the nice people I am going to prepare a gift for. All birthdays, special occasions and all the Christmas gifts recipients go into a long list as early as possible. Then I try to choose the gift in the same manner - as early as possible. That is the key! Although as you can see, sometimes it means November start for Christmas gifts…

But I have almost half of the work already done now. Here is how this happens.

After I make the recipients list, I write the gift next to the recipient’s name. This may look bizarre or strange, but it is useful when you choose a Christmas gift as early as March. This is one of the things that make everything much nore easier if you happen to do the actual shopping/making in November or December.

Another trick I use is buying the gift wraps once or twice a year. I buy kids, adults and Christmas type paper, keeping two or three rolls of each available at any moment. This usually means buying no more that two rolls Christmas paper each year and it makes colourful pile of presents combined with the remaining paper from the previous couple of years or so. I buy some ribbons in the same manner. So I never run out of paper and ribbon for any occasion add keep a really little stock.
The good thing is I can always add some extra variety /and paper and ribbon lengths/ for both my personal gifts and orders wrapping by mixing my personal and “professional” supplies.

Then we come to what I am going to start today - preparing the presents - making or buying in a as organized as possible manner. Prepared presents are being wrapped, named and stored right after completion.

Or…
… I happen to wrap all family present in the Christmas night when everybody else is in bed. It is organizational failure. But a magical one! And I tend to find magic in visiting my parents with a big bag full of unwrapped presents and papers, ribbons, scissors… Santa Clause packing workshop in a bag… when I hide myself /and the bag/ and wrap all in few minutes.

Well, we try to make it as nice, planned and ordered as possible now, but why not called it magic if it happen to be not as ordered as planned, right? It will be Christmas!

Which are your tricks to make Christmas gifts preparation more enjoyable?

The machine applique acts as quilt-as-you-go here and since I finished applique, approximately two years ago, this little quilt was stored. I decided to try hand quilting this summer and quilted the blue curves. I changed my needle somewhen in the middle and it turned out the first one was absolutely wrong choice. The new one allowed much more stitches per inch. This makes the whole quilting very “unique” as the stitches density is quite variable and getting higher. I even tried variegated thread, which also adds “uniqueness”. Well, I like it and this is all that matters now. Hopefully it will be ready for Christmas.

These are just guesses meant to make you smile, actually. But I see no other explanation of this. If you live in a city and happen to knit or embroider outside of your own home today, you will be most likely considered strange. These things are considered grannies’ priorities and a young modern woman is expected to drink coffee and chat instead. Well, I do not drink coffee, which is strange enough.

Nice hand made home decor and fashion accessories are respected, but knitting or buying hand-knitted socks is “strange”. Of course I do not care of being considered strange, but I am surprised to see that knitting /that I currently rediscovered/, which is one of the most popular crafts is not respected even by some of the yarn shop sellers in my city.

How do you feel about crafting? Do you care if someone thinks you are crazy to knit when you can buy mass-produced knitted good instead? Or any other craft. Do you appreciate the art and craft mainly for the process and uniqueness or respect the practical use too?n

My desk is a table and it is usually empty…. unless covered with what I use for something I do at the moment. Right now it is empty. So I just placed /almost/ all the things I worked on during the past 7 days on it and took a picture. You can see my new adventure - knitting, the Christmas cards for the blog giveaway, some new fabrics and other things to play with. I placed some papers /cards materials/ too as I like them all a lot: Dutch paper, Italian tissue paper and French cardboard. It is strange how international a card could be…

Though I use embroidery skills from time to time, knitting and crocheting are something I omit. Or I did so! I was never fond of knitting and crocheting. They seemed slow to me /as I was slow/…
I have knitted no complete item ever. But started last week. I have one cupcake ready. It is not looking exactly the way it is supposed to, but it is a start. And I have just started a hat for myself. A long list of items to be knitted appeared miraculously in my journal!!! So I have to start quickly.

I had no yarn, no needles just 2 pairs and a wool ball my mother gave me for practice. And she did help me with recalling what I was supposed to remember! And did not tell me I am crazy to start something new now with all my other stuff waiting for me /with a just vague idea and some printed free patterns/…. Thank you mom! My kid seems kid is quite intrigued of the process and my husband seems to got used to my crafting madness. I am a lucky girl!

I bought some yarn and I am heading for a pair of needles now. All of this made me think about crafting nowadays. It is not very popular. It is considered almost strange. More on this soon as it is a long story and I have some tasks and /more importantly /needles waiting for me…