As many people who know me can attest I’m a very crafty person, and more than a little ADD at times, which is why my list of hobbies is fairly long. Writing, of course, is my greatest love, but anything sewing related comes in as a close second. 2013 saw me suffering from a pretty severe case of the quilting bug, and while I focused most of my attention on writing throughout 2014, I still cultivated my love for all things sewing. In November I decided to take up embroidery (something I haven’t done since I was about eight years old), and made a couple Christmas gifts for family.

My first crafty item on the list was making Christmas stockings for Mr. Awesome Sauce, one of our kitties and myself. Our other cats already had stockings I’d bought years ago, but somehow the rest of us were severely lacking in the stocking department.

I made this little elf couple for Mr. Awesome Sauce’s dad and his wife. I wasn’t sure what to do with the finished piece and ended up just framing it in an embroidery hoop so they can hang it on the wall.

The most labor intensive embroidery pieces I did this year were this set of Christmas cushions I made for my mum. That Santa took forever. In the end though, it was totally worth all the time spent working on it, and my mum absolutely loved them. For anyone interested, I get all of my embroidery patterns from Urban Threads. They have an amazing selection of designs in dozens of categories and themes.

Some of my other Christmas crafts included a set of potholders and coordinating oven mitt for my mum:

And another set for Mr. Awesome Sauce’s mom:

More sewing fun was had making a set of reversible placemats and matching napkins for my mum:

And a set of reversible placemats for my sister-in-law:

Our final Christmas craftiness didn’t include any sewing, but involved a pretty cool (and easy!) method for creating personalized mugs. We made mugs for several friends and family members, but I only managed to get pictures of the ones we made for Mr. Awesome Sauce’s mom and his uncle:

After all this crafting you’d think I’d want to swear off sewing for a while, right? Wrong. I’ve been playing around with paper-pieced hexagons:

I’m thinking that these will eventually be made into a table runner, maybe as a gift for my mum next Christmas.

And finally, I just finished making a pair of wee little bunnies for my beautiful twin nieces who are turning 2 in a few days. I made them using this awesome pattern, and have plans to make them some more clothes and friends in the future using the other patterns available on the site.