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...  ;)