A Lotta Holiday

Now that all the holiday presents have been gifted, I can show off some of the things I have been working on!  I ended up making nearly all my sewn holiday gifts with Lotta Jansdotter's fabric line, Echo, so I'm putting all of those gifts in this post and will come back and share the others after I finish up one last (totally late) gift.  It's funny, when I first saw Echo I wasn't sure if I would get any - which is crazy, since I have several of Lotta's books and love her designs.  But I just wasn't sure it would play well with other fabrics and I didn't want to make a whole quilt out of it.  Then when I started thinking about making holiday gifts, I decided to use it to make a few gifts... and then realized that it would be great for a number of folks on my list and ended up going back to get more fabric!  Getting to use a fabric that I loved made the last minute frantic holiday sewing still feel fun, and I think everyone really liked their gifts.

I made a couple totes using my easy tote bag tutorial - the one at the top was sized up quite a bit to make a more substantial bag, while the one above was the regular size.

I also made a matching zip pouch to go with this tote, with some essex linen and a line of hand-stitching as an accent.

I think this tote bag with a reverse applique circle was my favorite sewn gift that I made - the idea of the circle with the off-kilter stitches was inspired by this bag on flickr.

The inside is lined with another Echo print and has a pocket.

Finally, I made a couple potholders, using a cut up bath towel as the inner layer rather than batting - I made a whole slew of potholders as gifts five or six years ago and that was the method I came up with at the time, it makes a nice, well-insulated potholder although the terry sheds everywhere in the process.

More essex linen on the back of this one.

Luckily I still have a bit of Echo left so I can make myself a little something too!