Okay, well perhaps it wasn’t time but me that forgot to share them, but let’s gloss over that ;o)  Anyway, there are a couple of Christmas pressies and a birthday pressie that I knocked up that I thought you might like to see.  Actually, I’ll only show you two finished projects, trust me, you’ll thank me on the third!

You may remember that last year I made my mum the Traveller Bag (pattern available from my shop here):

It’s a weekend bag, so it’s really quite big:

So she asked if this year I could make her a companion bag that she could use with it when travelling, especially when flying, which she does a fair amount of between work and holidays.  The requirement was that there would be an easy access pocket for her iPad so that she could grab it and read without having to rummage for it, plus an adjustable strap to make it cross body and therefore leave her a free hand for tickets and things.  So this is what I came up with in the same main fabric as the original bag:

The pocket for her iPad is in the back, along with a zip pocket for boarding passes and passports.  Underneath the twist lock flap there are a number of other slip pockets for phones and other bits and pieces, and the main body of the bag has a zip closure as well so that if it slips round the back no-one can reach in for a rummage.  I’d like to get a pattern for this out, but I’m not promising a date or anything right now.

The other Christmas pressie I made was a fleece dressing gown for my dad (at his request).  It came from this pattern, and that’s as much as I’m going to make you see of what it looked like ;o)

This was the first time that I used my overlocker to make clothes, and the first time I engaged the knife, which was a bit scary biscuits, but although I ended up with some slightly frilly seams I think it was successful in the end:

Finally, for his birthday last week I got my dad a fun wee in-car camera to use with his MG, and of course it needed a wee bag to live in.  I went for a retro print to match the retro car, using an old Melody Miller line from her pre-Cotton + Steel days for the main body of the bag, and a Denyse Schmidt print for the drawstring section:

How about you, did you make a lot of pressies for Christmas?