Thinking holidays

I'm not usually someone who plans ahead and is all organized for the holidays (in fact, I have been guilty of doing lots of shopping on Dec 24th on more occasions than I would like to admit). However, I now live in Germany while my friends & fam remain in Canada. Shipping packages (using the affordable cheap rate) takes 6 weeks, which essentially means, I'm already very late on the gift front. All of that is a long-winded way to explain why I have actually been thinking about the holidays in November.

This isn't even a gift - this was a 5 minute project to use up some felt scraps. But I like it. Simple but with potential. May require a glue gun to keep it all together (but that would mean I would have to go and buy a glue gun - I know, what kind of crafter doesn't own a glue gun?).

To make the 3D tree, all you have to do is cut out two 2D trees and slit one from the top & one from the bottom:


Now I must get going on those gifts....

The matching pouch

With my leftover fabric from the Weekender Bag, I made a matching Straight Sided Triangular Cosmetic Bag using this tutorial.



The tutorial was great (I really appreciate the people who take the time to tutorialize their creations!) but I would suggest a small modification for future versions. I found that the raw edges of the zipper were exposed on the inside due the addition of the exterior fabric squares (which does look great from the outside). See what I mean here:


Yes, I admit a bit picky, but I felt the need to cover these raw ends of the zipper. In this case I hand stitched a little patch over the ends.



For future pouches, it would be simple to add a square of the lining material to ends of the zipper at the same time as squares of exterior fabric.

I also referred to twelve22's zip pouch tutorial for additional zipper installation confidence boosting (her tip that you fold the zipper toward the lining when sewing the side seams was very helpful - but probably makes no sense unless you are actually making a pouch!).

Oh, and I also added little loops in the side seam - I like having something to hang onto while zipping!