Lots of Ornaments... and a Preview!

I made all sorts of ornaments before Christmas. Did you know that embroidery hoops come in really tiny sizes just for this sort of thing? I used some Sublime Stitching holiday patterns, and some patterns I drew myself. Here's the best of the bunch.

I use patterned background fabric for some of them. The picture didn't come out that well, but I like the ornament itself.

 This cute little penguin went to my cousin's daughter, Mackenzie.

I tried making a few ornaments out of felt. I saw similar ones in a magazine and they were really cute. In person? Not so much. I think they look a bit like a 5-year-old did them. But they have character, I suppose.

I made this Union flag to give to my friend Marie for her 30th birthday. She's a fellow Anglophile and studied in London, too. Her husband is an old friend of mine, and as soon as we met, we instantly bonded over our love of all things British.

A close-up of the stitches. I can't tell you how tempted I was to keep this for myself!

I have a few other projects to write about before I'm all caught up, but here's a preview of what I'm working on now. It's come a long way since this photo was taken (about a month ago now), but I'm very excited to share it with you:

Yup, that's the start of my very first quilt! I got it in my head that I wanted to put my sewing machine to good use, and my supervising editor (who is quite a talented and crafty lady) inspired me to just jump right in. It's been a very interesting process. It seemed completely daunting at first, but with a lot of help from online tutorials, I am now almost finished. I'll write more about it at a later point, but now that it's finally starting to look like a quilt and I'm 95% sure it won't turn out to be a complete disaster, I think it's safe to share. :)