One of my goals with my children has been to give them a gift for Christmas each year that I have made. This would probably be easy if I were a knitter, a sewer, or super crafty. But I'm not. I'm long on goals, but short on time and talent.
I confess that I know how to knit, but I'm just not very good or fast at it. I have made each of the children a scarf, but I could only produce one each year, and even that was a challenge. My mom acquired a sewing machine for me, and it sat in the box for about 2 years. I pulled it out this year to work on Halloween consumes, and I really loved it. I still don't have any idea what I'm doing, but my mother gave me a quick tutorial, and I just decided to blunder my way through it. It has been quite fun.
So now that our 12 days of Christmas have passed, I thought I would share these simple, quick gift ideas. I will try to post one a week for the next few weeks. If you have any handmade gift ideas that you would be willing to share, please post them in the comments. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would welcome new ideas.
My children are fascinated by fingerless gloves or mittens. I'm not sure if they have a proper name, but we call them hand warmers. I had thought about knitting some and several knitters have told me how easy they are to make. But making thumb holes and knitting on round needles, those just aren't skills I have. When my sister, Sarah, overheard someone talking at a party about how to make them out of old sweaters, I thought that sounded like something I could handle.
I did get these made for the kids year. Thank goodness we celebrate 12 days of Christmas because I finished these up on about day 9. They have been wearing them to school, to play outside, or just around the house. Sometimes they wear them inside out or upside down, but I don't care what they do with them so long as they enjoy them. Oscar wore them to bed the other night, but they must have gotten too hot at some point because I found them hanging on the side of the bed in the morning.
Chloe also spotted a pair on the cover of the Once soundtrack (Great movie and great soundtrack, by the way. "Broken-Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy" has become a family favorite).
I'm going to make myself a pair, too. My hands get so cold in the winter when I'm typing on the computer in our basement office. I also think they would be great for reading in bed. You know, for that 3 minutes of reading that I do at night before I conk out. Sometimes I'm toasty under the covers, but my hands have to be out to hold the book. I think a pair of these will do the trick.
Here are the steps to make them.
1. Get a sweater from the thrift store. You want cashmere or wool so that you can felt it (see below). I found a few old cashmere sweaters for $3 or $4 each.
2. Cut the sleeves off the sweaters and run them through the washing machine with hot water and soap. Depending on how small they are at the end of the process you may want to repeat it and/or run them through the dryer, too. It took a couple of washings and dryings for me to get the sweaters the size I wanted. Some felted better than others, but when they were done, they were small enough to fit a child.
3. Hem the top of the arm where it was cut from the sweater. You can do this on a sewing machine or by hand. If the sweater still looks too big, you can turn it inside out and sew it along the length on the seam side to make it narrowser.
4. Cut a hole for the thumb on the seam side. Sew around the hole to keep it from raveling.
5. Decorate as you like. I cut out small pieces of felt and sewed them on as decorations. Chloe got flowers, Olivia's were bears traced from a drawing of her teddy bear that she had made, and Oscar's was... well, he thought it was a bear at first, but it actually something from Star Wars. Any Star Wars fans out there want to venture a guess?
.... and the Mother of the Year Award goes to Margy Oheron. Yay Margy!
Posted by: Sharon Hammond | January 16, 2010 at 09:12 PM
you are such a fun and creative mom!! i need to start taking pointers...your old sweater idea did remind me of this, though, which i thought was cute idea...http://www.rekn.it/
Posted by: chronicles of momnia | January 18, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Thanks for the kind words Sharon and momnia. I love the old sweater reknit! Thanks for sharing that. And of course they have cut-off gloves on offer too.
Posted by: Margy | January 18, 2010 at 03:43 PM