Christmas Projects - Complete!

I'm super excited to have finished up a number of Christmas gift projects this weekend, so I could get back to making my Kat Quilt.  My family is going on a cruise and we'll be gone all next week, so I lose 2 weekends for sewing / wrapping / mailing.  (Poor me, right?)  I knew I had to keep the project list small this year, since I had to get them all completed (and mailed) before we leave.

First I'll share the one I'm most proud of, it's a cookbook of family recipes.  My grandmother passed away 2 years ago, she was 93 years old.  After her funeral, I wanted to make a pizza that she would always make when we saw her.  It's not a traditional pizza and I wasn't sure what she used for the crust.  I started rummaging through my mom's recipe box to see if I could find anything.  While I didn't find the pizza recipe (we figured it out later, though), I did find dozens of hand written recipes that she had given to my mom.

I made copies of all the recipes written in her handwriting, as well as a few my mom wrote down that my grandmother probably told her over the phone.  When I got home, I made copies of all the recipes Grandma had written out for me, as well.

This year I decided to scan all the recipes and compile a cookbook to give my mom, brother, sister and a few very close family friends.  I think this will be a really special gift since it includes all those recipes we're always calling each other for, and most of them are actually written in Grandma's own handwriting.

Here's the cover.  This recipe book includes mostly recipes from Grandma, but also a few others from close family friends that my family loves.  My color printer isn't working so I printed these in black and white then colored in (with colored pencils) the ladybug graphic on the cover.

The cookbook turned out to be over 60 pages long, so I grouped the recipes into Appetizers, Snacks, Entrees, Desserts, etc. and made a table of contents page for it.  Each section also has a table of contents page that lists the recipes in that section.

Here's one of the pages, with a recipe written by Grandma.  

To go along with the cookbook, I made a few more sets of potholders and matching towels.  These all measure around 9" square.  I used 1 layer of Insul-Bright and 1 layer of cotton batting.  

For my brother, who is a professional chef and also a NY Yankees fan.

For my sister.  The patchwork side is the front of the hot pad and the Minnie Mouse dots are on the back.

For my mom.  Please don't ask what I was thinking with the arrangement of that log cabin block.  That's what happens why I sew late at night.  I didn't even realize how odd it looked until *after* I had quilted it.  I have a feeling she'll like them anyway :-).

This one only has 1 hot pad.  I used an English paper piecing pattern called "Mix it Up" from Kelli at Seriously...I think it needs stitches.  I only made the mixer parts (not the background) and then appliqued it on to a beige background fabric.

Last but certainly not least, I made 6 of these little pencil pouches for my daughter to give her friends for Christmas.  

They're all the same except for the zipper color.

We filled them with some peace sign pencils, erasers and a package of M&Ms.

It feels SOOOO good to have the Christmas projects not only complete, but wrapped and ready to mail... and it's only December 3rd!  Yay!!

~*~ May your day be full of Love and Ladybug Hugs ~*~

Thanks for stopping by!

~ Kat ~