Butterick 5338 and Eco-Friends Gifts for My Boss

So, what do you get for a lawyer that makes more in a year than the sum total of all of your eartly possessions?  Nothing, you make gifts.  I'm fortunate that the attorney to whom I am referring appreciates handmade gifts, as does his wife.  I had to really think this year, having rejected my original idesa of family robes, and came up with some eco-friendly items.

Coasters. 

I decided on the Criss-Coasters (the tutorial is here) from Allsorts.  This was not, however, a random decision.

I recevied the same coasters from a swap several years ago and I just love mine.  You will notice that the ones I made were smaller.  That's because I was just going to wing it.  Then I realized that I had no clue as to the order of the fabric stacks, so I searched for the tutorial.  My squares were already cut to 4" when I decided to read the tutorial and saw that they should be 4.5".

I'm quite happy with the results.  Here they are ready to go into their Christmas gift box.

I then decided to make eco-friendly grocery bags since I've been planning to make some for myself for quite some time.  I used Butterick 5338.  I made 4 girly bags and 4 manly bags. 

The construction of these bags surprised me in many ways.  They were certainly more involved that I expected.  The have french seams.

Bias binding in several places.

And I added extra reinforcement for the bottom seam of the bag: 2 rows of stitching, serging and bias tape to stablized the whole thing.

After 2 nights of sewing and cursing, the bags were finished.  Love them!!  I'm definitely going to do some for myself -- I can't wait to say goodbye to those plastic bags that always get a hole in the bottom -- but I'm going to seek out a simpler bag on the interweb.  Don't get me wrong, these are great.  But it's a lot of work for a bag to carry bananas and juice.  I think this pattern is perfect for a gift though -- very Williams Sonoma.

My boss and his wife a wine afficianados.  I found this fabric in my stash and made...dish towels.

Here's the entire gift with all the parts pulled together.  I found these eco-friendly coffee cups at Joann Fabrics and made use of my 40% off coupons.

It's the kind of gift I would love to get myself.  Hope they like it!