Down to the wire

We leave tomorrow for my cousin’s where we’ll spend Christmas and start Hanukkah, so today I absolutely had to get the last of the presents sewn.

My cousin’s husband is getting this blanket, pretty much exactly the same as the tutorial version, except I changed the binding to chocolate brown.

I forgot to take a picture of the finished blanket before my son whipped it out of my hands and wrapped it up.  In fact, I made it in such a rush, the two pictures above are the only two I remembered to take of it in progress.  You’ll just have to imagine the knot tying and the ironing. I’ll have to add the final shot after he unwraps it. But it really does look just like the one in the link above, except the binding color.

Well, and the fact that I did a fairly bad job of sewing on the binding.  I’m not used to working with either faux fur or suede-like fabric and I struggled a lot with sewing all those thick layers evenly.  It looks fine on the suede side, but the plaid sherpa side has a very wavery edge.  In a perfect world, or one with a couple more weeks until Christmas, I’d rip it off and redo it, but he’s unlikely to be highly critical, and the time is gone.

I did really like the suede fabric, despite the difficulties in both sewing and ironing, and I can see making something with it again.  Probably not with the sherpa fabric though.  Maybe on the back of a crazy quilt?

My other finish today was a couple of sets of felted coasters to give as stocking stuffers.  These started as a scarf, abandoned unfinished years ago.  I started throwing it in with loads of laundry until it was thoroughly felted.

Then I cut it into squares and did a blanket stitch around the edges with yarn, and viola, a couple of presents where a guilt inducing WIP used to be.

Now, if we can just fit all the presents and six people in our car, we’ll be all set . . .