It was a busy end to the year…
I do love making gifts for family and friends. And with half our family living overseas I need to be organised. Last year was the first time I didn’t get my gifts finished in time. Something I’m hoping is a one off! Still I’ve been dying to show you what I made for family gifts in 2024.
Last year saw the arrival of our beautiful niece Jemila. And ever since I’ve been collecting baby patterns. I don’t often get to make for babies so I’m excited to get the chance again! This time around I decided to give Spotlight’s free ‘Star Wars Baby Blocks’ a go.
The Spotlight patterns are always a bit more challenging because they are quite light on instructions. Plus them don’t include any graphics or visual aids to help those (who like me) are visual learners. But you can’t expect too much from a free pattern.
Since the Baby Blocks were for my niece- I decided not to make them Star Wars themed. Instead I found the cutest Alpaca and Lama fabric at Spotlight. I matched them with a range of brightly coloured plain cotton fabrics. Perfect! 👌
One thing I did decided to change (other than the fabric) was to add interfacing. Since all of the fabrics (except one) were cotton quilting fabrics I thought they could use a little reinforcement. Especially a gift for a young child.
I did make one error whilst making Jemila’s baby blocks. I accidentally sewed some of the seam allowance’s together. This created extra bulk in the corners. Luckily I decided to make one block first. So I made sure this didn’t happen for the rest.
The other project that was popular for the family gifts in 2024 was the QAYG Zipper Pouch. You might find it familiar? It’s a project I’ve made before. Only this time I decided to skip the ‘Quilt As You Go’ part of the project.
By skipping the ‘QAYG’ part, and only using one fabric, it massively reduces the time involved. I still did quilting on the exterior fabrics though. Mainly because quilting is “in” at the moment. But also to help keep the cotton batting in place.
Otherwise I followed all the other steps for making the QAYG Zipper Pouch. Unfortunately this pattern can’t to purchased by itself. It’s a pattern from Svetlana Sotak’s book ‘That Handmade Touch’. So if you want to make one you’ll need to buy the book. But I can highly recommend it!
All in all I was really happy with how my family gifts in 2024 turned out! The baby blocks were super cute.🥰 And made even more special because it matched her mum’s QAYG Zipper Pouch. I just hope that my family love the handmade gifts I made. ❤️
