Christmas making....

I have decided that I am making the kids a snuggle quilt for Christmas this year.  Apart from somewhat alleviating (albeit temporarily) my fabric obsession, I am fed up of big, expensive, noisy, plastic-y toys that they seem to accumulate en-masse at this time of year, and which they either break, lose interest in or lose pieces to before the end of the festive season.  Personally, I always try and get them things that I know have longevity, that they can learn from, and that they can still have fun with.  This year, I bought the biggest box of lego (I know, big and platic-y, but Lego doesn't count!  It's educational and gives hours of fun - even for me....!) as a joint gift and I'm making the quilts.  I have also bought a selection of art and crafts for Jasmine and a selection of books on ancient civilisations for Ben (he loves factual books).  In addition, I bought them each their own beautifully illustrated children's Bible.  They love going to Sunday School, and I know they'll be so proud to take their own Bible's with them.  I have gone through the toys in the playroom and thrown out anything that was broken, and will donate to charity everything that is in good enough condition. 

Back to fabrics...here are the ones I chose for Jas' quilt.....

It took me hours and hours of intense internet research to finally choose these ones.  There is so much beautiful fabric out there - and unfortunately most of the best stuff is sold on American/Australian/Japanese sites.  I also knew that I wanted this quilt to represent Jasmine's personality.  She is girly (hence the florals), but she is gutsy, passionate, vibrant and confident.  I wanted to reflect this in my choice of fabric.....

When they arrived, I loved each of them individually, but I was suddenly very unsure of how they would go together......

I also built up a new fear in my head of actually sewing the quilt together.  It seemed so simple, yet so hard....I don't have all the fancy tools like rotary cutter, mat and ruler for accurate squares and I've never sewn a quilt top (to be honest, other than the Ipod case, I haven't sewn anything by machine before, and not much more by hand either!)

But I did it and despite some minor flaws in the size of squares (which I think add to the character of it), it looks gorgeous.  I will post a pic when I have actually sewn the back and the wadding and quilted/tied it. 

As for Ben, I knew that I wasn't going to do a patchwork for him.  There is tons of great fabric out there, but I couldn't find anything that I thought 'matched' Ben in the way I wanted.  I did find the cutest elephant print fabric though that I just knew he'd love.  Unfortunately it is only sold through Japanese sellers, and that means import taxes and duty :-(  This makes it a very expensive option.  It came in a variety of background colours so I let Ben pick his favourite....(I secretly wanted either the orange or the blue).  This is what he chose.....

I bit the bullet and forked out the £17 it cost me to get a meter of this beautiful cotton linen blend.  £18 is the limit before you incur taxes and duty, so I decided to supress the urge to buy all the other colours I liked.  The problem is that fabric is not printed indefinitely.  They do discontinue after a few seasons.  After Christmas is over I intend to get some fat quarters of the orange, blue, green and grey backgrounds too.....I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a project especially for them :-)  Like the new babies due in the family..... or a certain 1 month and 3 day old baby that I have yet to send a gift to....

My children love nothing than to snuggle with a warm blanket and their mummy at the end of a day, after their bath/shower.  I can't wait for them to see these!  Will post pics of the finished articles as soon as I'm done.