One of the things I often buy when at Busy Bees are items from Moda's wonderful range of pre-cuts. Most quilters are familiar with jelly rolls and charm packs and Moda have developed a range of complementary items, all with lovely cake based names - fab! One purchase a while back that had been tucked in the cupboard was a Honey Buns Christmas pack. This is a pair of rolls of 1.5" strips of fabric, quite small and ideal for a fun project. In the pack was a recipe for some Seminole pieced Christmas stockings with attractive ruffle tops and so I decided to give these a go. The instructions were easy to follow and clear, and I'm now the proud owner of six dinky little miniature stockings, ready for Christmas. This was the first time I'd done any Seminole work, and it's great.

My thinking is that these would be ideal either as decorative items, say hung on a door knob, or ideal for jazzing up a smaller present, by making the stocking part of the gift, if you see what I mean. They'd be perfect filled with something like a soap, some hand cream and a few chocolates for instance. Now that I'm working at the library, it's likely we'll exchange token gifts with a few colleagues, so they'll be perfect for that. It's also good to get ahead on a few Christmas things - September is nearly upon us and I know how fast the end of the year seems to fly by. Making them was a lot of fun. Now all I need to do is to ensure I don't put them somewhere so safe I forget about them!

The only downside - lint. I'm wearing a navy long sleeved cotton top and a chambray tiered knee length skirt - both are now covered with maddening little pieces of fabric "crumb". Oh well, it makes a change from dog hair.