More Christmas gifts...bear with me.
On my last full day of Christmas crafting before returning to work, I was feeling short on time and short on ideas. There are a couple of ladies in my life who needed gifts but I just hadn't come up with the perfect fit for them. The longer I spent brainstorming ideas the shorter my list of possibilities became. There was much pressure to pull the trigger on something, just to get the ball rolling. Yeeps...stressful! But in the midst of gift making panic, I found some calm in an old familiar pattern.

The "mother" is a (I think) McCall's pattern that I first used for a traveling bag last Spring. The "baby" is my own smaller version of the pattern that I had made for a much needed Summer purse.

Didn't someone say that marathon gift-making is not the appropriate time for trying out new patterns? Well I certainly can't say that I adhere to that rule but it sure does feel good to make something familiar. You don't have to keep double checking instructions, you know which steps can be glazed over and you know exactly how it's going to turn out. These two bags just flew through my sewing machine.