The theme for this year’s handmade for the holidays gifts was ‘using the stash’. With the exception of some necessary new items, every handmade gift was made with something from my stash or sourced from the local creative reuse place, The Scrappy Elephant.

For my cousins’ girls, kitty cat headbands. The headbands were new, but the all the fabric involved came from Scrappy (the pink rosebud flannel being the scrap of a nightshirt I made myself earlier in the fall). I used yarn from my knitting stash to attach the ears. Judging from the enthusiastic facetime call I got from two of the girls upon receipt, I think they were a hit.

For baby Ollie, fabric blocks. I dug into my stash, looking for a variety of colors and textures to include for a tactile baby toy. Flannels, linens, plaids, solids, colorful prints, ribbons of different textures all got incorporated for a ridiculously fast and easy gift to make. These blocks might be my new go-to gift for new babies, they’re that easy. And fantastic stash busters!

I’m not exactly sure what triggered this year’s assembly line grown up gift – I sat in my little craft corner sifting through fabrics, exploring ideas when the idea of little appliqued Christmas trees on dishtowels sprang up. Honestly, I think it was this crab fabric that sort of brought it about.

I have a dear friend that every year, I try to incorporate something a little crabby-themed into his gift. Digging through my stash, I found fabric leftover from an earlier Covid face mask I’d made (remember the days of fabric face masks?) and immediately thought a crabby Christmas tree needed to happen. Something besides the tree shape was needed to really make it say Christmas though, so after digging through the stash to find just the right coordinating fabric, I ended up adding a scrap of my parents’ old Christmas tablecloth I’ve been cutting into for years. It’s become aprons, appliques on advent calendars, card holders and other holiday decorations for various family and friends. I love that it has found so many new lives and homes in its retirement years.

The rest of the towels just sort of fell into place from there. I used a (new to me and) different stitch on my machine to applique the fabric, played around with contrasting thread and generally had fun creating these little gifts. I self drafted the trees and all the fabrics are from my stash, with the flour sack towels purchased new. I love how they turned out.

My cousin Molly has a thing for cats, so when I found this fabric at the Scrappy Elephant, I knew it needed to be something for her. It felt like an apron was the best way to use the fabric without cutting into it too much, so I went for it. I am particularly pleased with that pocket. How cute is that?

For my girl, a flannel nightshirt with fabric from Scrappy Elephant that also happened to be a test run for sizing for her on the All Well Box Top Dress. The fit is just right and she cannot be happier with it.

A few lucky people got hand-knit wrist warmers. I drafted the pattern myself, based on a pair I saw at the Montpelier Fiber Festival this fall. The woman selling them told me they were easy enough, surely I could figure it out myself, so when my friend Melissa bought a pair from her, I took it upon myself to measure them, knit myself a test pair to figure it out, then altered the pattern as needed. The first pair came from a ball of yarn I couldn’t resist buying at the fiber festival, but next two came from partial skeins I found at the Scrappy Elephant. (I clearly have a thing for variegated yarns.) All three have yarns that aren’t just variegated in color, but in size as well, making it slightly tricky to get a decent gauge. The end result may look a little funky laying flat for a photo, but are just fine being worn and that’s what counts.

There were of course the usual jars of jams, jellies and pickles handed out, many of them in fabric bags I made. Fabric from the Scrappy Elephant, ribbons from my stash. More and more, I am trying to move towards reusable wrapping whenever I can. Making little gift bags takes just a few minutes and cannot be easier. I may have whipped up one of those babies up at 9 pm Christmas Eve as I was setting presents out under the tree and found something that needed to be wrapped. (It was seriously easier to sew a bag than it was to wrap it!) I need to remember to make some holiday themed ones throughout the year so that Christmas isn’t just a mad dash, where I have great intentions, but eventually, have to scrap ideas because I just run out of time.

Running out of time happens every year, this one included. I had grand plans for some gifts that got sidelined until I could focus on them more, but c’est la vie. I lost some crafting days to some unforeseen issues around the house that needed to be dealt with. Nothing terribly dire, although having to disassemble my craft corner – and leave it that way until further notice – a week before Christmas did send me spinning for a hot minute. I pulled up my big girl pants, figured out how to still get presents made in the chaos and got it done. Now that the holidays are over, not only am I doing my annual clean-out of what Edie nicknamed my “Happy Corner” many moons ago, I’m completely overhauling and reorganizing it in ways I haven’t done in years, in part to make room for the new serger (!!!) Santa brought me. Then I can get back to making.