Christmas craft-a-thon and goodies galore

My favourite favourite thing about Christmas time is brainstorming, planning and making beautiful things to give away to the lovely people in our lives. A few years ago we held a craft weekend so that we could do some crafting in a communal setting, so as to share food preparation and child-minding duties. It was a huge success, with all participants churning out all manner of gorgeous and ingenious christmas gifts. Last weekend was our 3rd annual craft weekend, this year held at the ever-inspirational, warm and beautiful home of our friends Jay, Scott, Poe and Ilo. The weekend basically involves a whole lot of eating, drinking, sewing, chatting, dancing, cutting-out, stitching, gluing and laughing (with a tiny little bit of sleeping in the middle) and at the end of it we go home, contented, full of love and armfuls of crafty gifts. Seriously, it's one of the highlights of my year. Some of the pieces being constructed at this year's craft weekend included little love-heart christmas decorations, crafted by the always-impressive Jay

I was mostly consumed with making doily bunting and embroidery-hoop pin-boards, both inspired by things I've seen in Frankie magazine.

The doily bunting was actually so great that we decided to keep some for ourselves. Here it is adorning our mantel.

Pearl was occupied with cutting out and sewing up shorts for some of our little friends. And lovely Louisa was doing a spectacular job of embroidering a kookaburra. Outstanding.

But when the weekend was over, it was back into the P&E sweatshop (ie. our dining room) for me. It's a busy time of year for the little cottage industrialist, with gift and custom orders flying in from all directions. The rain over the last few days has afforded me some much-needed time to catch up on my Georgie Love collection, which has been sadly neglected in the wake of much custom sewing. A shipment of skirts and bibs is being sent off today, so should be up on the site in the next few days. I had had a bit of a tablecloth bonanza, so I kept these skirts pretty simple so that the linen could truly shine.

But you know I can seldom stay away from a little button detail every now and then, especially when some tiny but pesky stains ruin an otherwise perfect piece of linen...

I'm pretty much in love with this minty-green with huge pink flower tablecloth, which has been made into a rather lovely A-line with navy side panels. I'm sad to see it go, but also happy that it will soon be adorning some lucky lady's bottom. If you buy it, feel free to send me a photo, I always love to see my skirts out in the world, and I also like to see the ladies who wear them.

The bibs are made from vintage tea-towels, are big, absorbent, and do up with velcro, so they're quick to put on and take off. They have always been a huge seller over christmas because they're quite cute, quirky AND functional. Bonus. One of the tea-towels is from Old Sydney Town, which I was pretty excited to find as it conjured strange and murky memories from my childhood of convict floggings. The bunny and very yellow duck tea-towels came from an outstanding little haul courtesy of Sally (who Loves Georgie). Perfect.

Handmade Christmas is the best, chuck out the rest!