My little Christmas sweatshop

Stefan calls the office my little sweatshop, because my sewing machine and its various supplies took over the extra table (oops).  I was slightly over-ambitious at Christmas with handmade presents, and I was still crazily trying to finish projects two days before we were due to fly.

And, of course, I couldn't put pictures of any of them on the blog, because I know perfectly well that several of the intended recipients read the blog.  (And I'm not as sneaky as Mel, who posted a picture of my Christmas present on her blog in November, but conveniently left out that it was a present.)  But, in the end, they all got done in time.  So, a month after the fact, and now that I know that the last of the presents reached its destination, here's what my little sweatshop produced for Christmas.

A massive, permanent Advent calendar for my brother, who loves Christmas very, very, very much.  And also chocolate.  It's about a metre by a metre, and I cross-stitched little ornaments to make each of the pockets.

With the numbers, too, so you know what day you're supposed to empty that pocket.  You get the idea.  It took a LOT of time (that's about 75 hours of cross-stitching, by my estimation, and about another 15 or so of sewing and pressing and arranging, especially since I changed my mind about the pockets while I was making them), but the final product was definitely worth it.


Except I may have shot myself in the foot with this one, because then Stefan and I wanted one for ourselves.  But I'm going to start it no later than August, I think, because given my current mental design for it, it'll be even more elaborate.

Next, because every Christmas I try to find a skull purse for Jen, and every Christmas they're either ugly or super-expensive or both, I gave up and made my own. The bottom part and the straps are velvet, and the skull's embroided on satin. The lining's black and white polka-dots, because they just don't sell skull fabric here.  I know.  I spent three months looking for it.

A close-up of the skull.  That's metallic silver thread, and it's done in embroidery rather than cross-stitch.  Lucky me, when I was trying to find skull patterns to embroider, I found a whole website full of embroidery patterns that weren't your usual kittens and puppies and teacups and such: skulls and ninjas and terrible puns and the like.

For Mel, whose cross-stitching is to die for, a giant tote bag to fit her supplies when she takes her projects with her to work on them away from home.  I have a small set of zippered pouches that I also made, while I had the sweatshop working, but Mel's projects are often massive and need much, much more space than mine.

NOT my work.  That's Mel's lovely, lovely stitching, on very tiny linen with silk threads (mine are cotton), which she sneakily posted to her blog without me realizing it was my Christmas present :P  Hence, a cross-stitch tote for Mel.

The inside of the tote.  It's hard to see, but there are rows of elastic running all the way down the left panel, with lines of stitching making them into small bands just the right size for the bobbins that hold embroidery floss.  A plaid pouch for miscellaneous things, and a large pocket big enough to fit patterns and fabric and everything else.  The scrunchy bits in the middle hold rolled-up works in progress.

 
 I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, in the end, because I had no pattern to follow, and I drafted the whole thing myself.  It's not perfect (nothing ever is), but I'm pretty happy with it.

And now, the cross-stitching.  One for my grandparents.

 (I really need to do a better job showing the scale of these: this is about 9 inches square).









 


















And one of each of Stefan's grandmothers.  These are about 5 by 7, roughly.
 
And finally, because I'm sneakier than I claimed: an apron for Stefan, who'd been complaining about our current apron not fitting him properly (because it's meant to fit me).  I was sufficiently sneaky to hide the fabric while I was washing it, cutting it, and sewing it, and to get my mother to print the necessary pattern pieces for me, because we don't have a printer and I generally just get him to print stuff at work.  I can tell you, manly aprons are few and far between on the Internet.  Your choices are either ruffles and frills, or barbecue aprons.  No middle ground.  This is just a close-up of the embroidery on the front panel, but at least you can get an idea of the fabric I went with.  Same embroidery site as the skull, so you can get an idea of the awful puns.  Sometimes you need an ice cube telling you to chill.


That was it for Christmas, but all told, that's about two months of cross-stitching and embroidering, and a lot of hours spent in front of the sewing machine.

So what am I working on now?  I'm trying to finish my Egyptian sampler, which I posted pictures of earlier in the year, before I stopped for Christmas projects.  Here's where I was in mid-October.  It's a lot more filled in since I got back from Canada: I'm just finishing off the last of the figures in the centre, and that'll be it for the actual cross-stitching.  Then I've got a solid month of fancy stitches and careful outlining (joy) before it'll be completely finished.  Some of the stitches are super-tiny, though, and I'm very, very glad I've now finished all of those.

Look!  I even remembered to add something for scale, and to hunt through the drawers for a Canadian penny, because Euro pennies aren't the same size.  As you can see, the king's face (and the queen's, which is incomplete in the picture above but is now done) are super-tiny for extra detail: each one of the bigger stitches is the same size as four of the tiny ones.  It looks incredible, and it wasn't quite as bad as I'd anticipated, but I was glad to be done with those.








Okay, now I'm looking back at all the pictures in the post and realizing that I did in fact finish a lot of projects over the last few months.  Maybe I do have my own little sweatshop.  Maybe Stefan's right after all...