Aprons by the dozen

I have been busy with the Christmas gift sewing.

This is the sum of the past week's efforts:

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I used the wonderful Four Corners Apron Pattern, any calico pieces from my stash that were larger than a meter long and mixed them together to make these fun aprons for my "Bag Ladies*" friends for Christmas. This was also an excellent opportunity to use up many left over spools of thread.

The Bag Ladies have been meeting to sew, craft, drink tea and generally share their lives since 1992. When I went "back to work" full time we could no longer meet at the community center or for coffee during the day. We really missed the crafting that we had been doing. Our kids were about the same ages and we all worked hard to make the best of what we had. We appreciated being able to make many of our family and friends gifts. Sometimes we were only 4 or 5 and other times we were 12 women all meeting together.

We started meeting during weekday evenings in each other's kitchens. I guess the gifts we made for those near and dear were as important to our budgets as to our psyches. We have created everything from twisted paper for bows, flowers and dolls, wreathes, "podgy" under glass plates, little stuffed animals, porcelain dolls, Sock Monkeys, Christmas Crackers, crochet, decorated tee shirts, knitting, painted wood, tole painting, fabric covered boxes, photo albums, countless holiday favours and decorations, soap, microwavable comfort bags, kitchen coordinates, homemade paper (that nearly set a kitchen on fire), food gifts in jars, anything that could be glued or stitched together and then we started quilting......

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There was the spring of the near mutiny. The ladies did not want to do so many sewing projects. They really did not enjoy sewing [May]. One of the ladies shop-hopped with me to a quilt shop and found a paper piecing pattern of a tent, a campfire and a canoe in a wall hanging [June]. A couple of others wanted to try also so I spent the summer showing them how to paper piece a quilt. Then they wanted to make a real quilt, full sized [September]. So by that Christmas 6 husbands were buying their non-sewing wives sewing machines. Now, 5 years later we keep making quilts and mostly quilts.

We do a few outside projects for the good of our community such as making up gift or food baskets for someone who is going through a rough patch, we make HumBug bags and fill them with a selection of toiletries for donation to a local women's shelter and more. These are wonderful women full of heart.

I try to make their gifts each year. From what I recall over the last few Christmases, I have so far made: Tote Bags with a custom embroidery panel front, Wonder Wallets, Thimble Keepers, and I can't think any farther back....

There is so much more sewing, quilting, shopping, wrapping and gifting to be done. That list however must remain private.

* We call ourselves the "Bag Ladies" because we were always dragging bags of supplies around from kitchen to kitchen so that we could craft and sew together.