Merry Christmas! My Christmas Sewing Wrap Up

It’s Christmas week! This might turn into a more personal post than usual. Do ya’ll like the personal/life stuff or are you just here for the sewing stuff?

I was recently chatting with some friends about what we usually do for Christmas and I had to answer that I don’t think we’ve spent two Christmases alike in our 19 years or marriage and Army life. This is our first duty station with no built in military community, so our more nomadic lifestyle is very foreign to most of those around us. This year my parents are coming! We’re so excited to have them and I’ve spent today making food lists and acquiring groceries (which takes half a day every time, it seems, however you obtain your groceries these days!)

I did manage to make myself a Christmas shirt! I got to wear it to see my oldest dance in the Nutcracker and again to church yesterday. I think this top will work for other things too, like a date night or Valentines Day.

I’ve made New Look 6624 before and it’s one of my favorite tops, I’ve gotten a ton of wear out of it. I wanted long sleeves for this top, though, so I used the sleeve piece from New Look 6582 and it worked perfectly, I didn’t have to make any changes to the pattern pieces.

The fabric was part of Hobby Lobby’s Fall fashion fabrics and it has tiny velvet dots! So fun.

I wore the top with the thrifted dress pants I scored from Goodwill. They’re the ones I hemmed in my how to hem your pants post.

I also sewed some gifts for my family this year and some little gifts for friends. I posted the little house sachet ornaments I made a few weeks ago. Their recipients really loved them, so that was a good feeling! I made new coffee sleeves for my husband and I made coasters for all my kiddos using my own quilted coasters tutorial. I chose fabrics to match each of their personalities of course :) I also made a set for some Star Wars loving family members. They really make great little gifts!

I also made oversized hot pads for some of my family members. I made one for myself too and I’ve already used it a lot. I was surprised to see it jump to my most repinned category on Pinterest, so it must be something that makes sense to a lot of other people too!

Check out my oversized hot pad tutorial to whip some up for yourself or for last minute gifts!

My daughter has to wear a mask to ballet class four nights a week plus Saturdays during Nutcracker season. While my origami face mask pattern is my most viewed blog post ever, she prefers the old school pleated kind, which I make single layer for her (Yes, I know that’s cheating, but I also prefer her not to pass out during those two hour classes). We went to our local quilt store to pick out Christmas fabrics for some fun masks for her and I sewed them up real quick. It was a simple way to make the mask wearing seem a little less of a bummer.

I think that’s all I sewed for Christmas. Natalie wanted a Christmas outfit, but I kinda just ran out of time. I have the pattern put together and I already have the fabric. It’s black corduroy and I’m using the Seamwork Dani pattern, so it’s something she’ll get a lot of use out of. I don’t feel bad for not getting it done for Christmas — and I bought her a new sweater instead, ha!

This is our first Christmas in North Carolina and it might be our only one. We’ll hopefully know more in the Spring, but we could be moving again as early as Summer. Moving during you-know-what has been hard because it’s just made it to slow and difficult to make connections and find friends and activities. Thankfully we found a church immediately upon moving here, which has been a huge blessing. My daughter Natalie is at an incredible ballet studio, even though it’s an hour away, eek! I’ve been able to use that time sitting in the car for blogging and reading, though, so even that’s been a blessing in a way. My other daughter Layla is taking voice and cello lessons, which she is loving, while hoping that musical theater opportunities will abound in the new year. My son Kelby is doing awesome in piano lessons (he’s playing lots of Christmas carols currently and it just makes my day every time!) and he’s hopefully starting football in a few weeks. He’s super excited about that. We’ve worked on improving our house here and it’s our favorite house so far! I’ll have to show you some home stuff soon if you’re interested in that.

So that’s a little family update for you! I’d love to know if you’re interested in my family news at all. Totally understand if you’re not, but I do miss the olden days of blogging a little bit, when we’d all just share what’s happening in our own families, before the days of SEO and Pinnable content, ya know? I guess I’m wanting to get a little more personal here!

I’m wishing you all a Merry Christmas and praying that the hope of Christ is revealed to you this Christmas, and that you can rest in God’s goodness … even in the middle of all the uncertainty.

Much love,

Nikki

P.S. This is the photo I wanted to put on the Christmas card, but I got outvoted.