Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Weekend Project: Christmas Presents Finished!

He was always late on principle, the principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
~ Oscar Wilde

I wish I could say that I was following some kind of principle when I was working on these Christmas presents last weekend (in January), but I don't like being late.  I just have a bad tendency, when making plans, to over estimate what I can accomplish and under estimate how busy I'm going to be...  

But - thanks to Ana's help!  - the last of my Christmas presents, 9 insulated casserole totes, were finished over the weekend and passed out at work yesterday!  :)

(I passed out the wine totes on our first day back to work after New Year's and those were a big hit too!)  



I'm sorry that the pictures aren't better - I had gotten up around 4 am on Monday to finish them up and was in serious danger of being late for work.  So I just grabbed a few snaps.  


You may remember that I had all my friends browse the website fabric.com and pick out 2 fabrics that they liked.  All I told them was that it was kitchen-related.  Each person told me his/her choices and I ordered the fabric and 9 Pyrex, 9 x 13 casserole dishes.  

Notice the little tab on the front to hold a spoon or spatula?  I considered buying each person a spoon, but I had already gone over any kind of budget, so I let that go...  


It was fun working with all those different fabrics.  The pattern was pretty reasonable.  About the only change that I made was a minor one - the instructions called for making the handles by sewing both side seams while the 40 inch strips were right-sides-together and then turning the tubes.  

I found that turning tubes that long was a bit tedious, so I only stitched one seam with the fabric right-sides-together.  Then I pressed under the other seam and top stitched the handle to seal it.  (The instructions called for top stitching anyways...)  


I also had fun deciding which fabric to put on the outside and which on the inside and whether to mix them a bit (like making the handles out of the contrasting fabric, etc.).  Hopefully each person will think that I made the best decision on his/her tote.  


They were a pretty big hit when I passed them out yesterday.  :)

We have semi-regular potlucks at work and most everybody does some pretty serious cooking, so I figured that these would be generally useful.  :)

Next year, I'm thinking of putting my new "One Yard Wonders" book out on the conference table and letting each person pick the project that he/she would like for me to make as his/her Christmas present.  And I will try to remember to start in September, not November!  Maybe, for once, I won't be late...  ;)

4 comments:

gwensews said...

You are very ambitious! Good job getting all those nice gifts finished!

Anonymous said...

They look great! And you are fabulous for doing all that.

BJ in TX said...

I want to work where you work!!! Your gifts look amazing - good job! Is the pattern in the book, BTW?

Christine said...

I cannot wait to get mine!!! :)