Extreme last-minute gift making

Well, after a rather long hiatus from my Christmas crafting (justified by my early completion of my first three gifts), I rushed out a couple more things the night before I gifted them:

For a friend at work, this is a purse organizer and a small zipper pouch. She always wants to change her purses to match her outfits, but complains about what a pain it is to transfer all her purse contents all the time, so I thought this might help. It’s basically a strip of pockets that she can fill with purse stuff, roll up and stick in one purse, then pull it out and move it to another purse easily. To make it, I cut two 10 by 20 inch pieces of fabric, interfaced them both with midweight interfacing, sewed them wrong sides together, turned, pressed, and edgestitched all the way around. Then I sewed a line across 4 inches from the bottom of the long edge, folded along that line, and sewed lines from top to bottom in somewhat random intervals to form the pockets (I think there are 6 pockets ranging in width from 1 to 5 inches). The zipper pouch is from this tutorial. It took me a minute (or several) to wrap my head around how it would all come out finished on the inside and such, but it worked great and I may make one for myself sometime too!

I also made a quick circle scarf for the same friend:

This has got to be the easiest gift of all time to make. I bought a third of a yard of jersey from the bulk bin at my local fabric shop. I trimmed off the selvages, then used a ruler and rotary cutter to make the long edges nice and straight, and sewed the short ends together. Done. So if it happens to be Christmas Eve and you’re one gift short, might I suggest a jersey circle scarf? I think it took me longer to buy the fabric than to make the scarf, seriously.

Finally, I made one more thing for my mom that I’ve posted over at the Crafty Christmas Club.

Woo-hoo, Christmas Crafting complete! So to all those who celebrate it, have a Merry Christmas. May it be filled with family, friends, food, and plenty of crafty gifts too!