Put little homemade gifts in the stocking

Many people feel that homemade gifts are the best, most meaningful gifts of all. I have a feeling that my 11-year-old daughter might disagree. Nevertheless, store employees at Hobby Lobby and Hancock Fabrics in Cape Girardeau say that lots of their customers are making gifts for Christmas this year.

"We've been selling the materials to make no-sew fleece blankets for about three years now," said Tracy Phillips, the department manager of the fabric department at Hobby Lobby. "It's one of those trends that just keeps hanging on. I think it's a good, practical gift and the kids love them."

Josh Yount, a clerk at Hancock Fabric, agrees.

"Women, men, brothers, sisters, everybody's making them," Yount said.

Making the blankets couldn't be much simpler.

Materials needed:

• Two pieces of fleece blanket fabric in coordinating prints, each cut to the desired size of the finished blanket

Instructions:

Cut selvage edges off sides and straighten cut edges if needed.

Lay main fabric on top of contrast fabric.

Cut a four-inch square from each of the corners.

Cut 4-inch lengths every inch along all the edges.

Tie the main and contrasting fringe together into a square knot (right over left, left over right). Continue tying all fringes.

Cost: $20 to $25.

Artist Rosetta Whitten and her hand-painted holiday door hanging at her Cape Girardeau home. (Laura Simon)

I am a crafty/creative sort of person, and I happen to know a few other women with similar interests. One of them is local artist Rosetta Whitten. She is a multimedia artist completing her bachelor's of fine art with sculpture emphasis at Southeast Missouri State University. And she loves to teach.

"I've held classes privately for individuals and at teaching studios for adults and kids. We did mosaics, floor cloth, photography, faux finishes and repurposing furniture," she said.

Her 'how-to' Christmas gift idea took me a little by surprise: "Door covers!"

I am familiar with both the commercially-made paper foil holiday door covers and the cute, kitschy felt ones people used to make in the 1950s and 60s, but I wasn't sure that that was the sort of easy, homemade Christmas gift project I had in mind.

Whitten makes them out of artist canvas, a cloth that's already primed and ready to paint on, and she decorates them for any holiday or just for everyday with acrylic paints and glitter. Unlike their paper and felt predecessors, she says her canvas ones are extremely durable.

"I am an avid collector of midcentury, modern and vintage decorations. But whenever I opened up the paper ones, they were so fragile that I wanted to come up with a way to keep that spirit. The basic design is easy to replicate onto the canvas and they will not fray and are virtually indestructible," Rosetta said.

And people don't have to be an artist to make one. They can stencil or stamp any design they'd like on them. "They can also be reversible," she said. "Just prime the reverse side with paint and you can have a Halloween theme on one side and Christmas on the other."

Materials needed:

• 2 1/2 yards artist canvas (purchased by the yard at craft stores)
• acrylic paint (any kind)
• dimensional T-shirt paint for outlining the designs (optional)
• glitter (optional)

Instructions:

Measure your door.

Cut the fabric to fit, also cutting a spot for the doorknob

Start painting

Attach the door cover to the door with double-sided carpet tape or a staple gun.

Cost: less than $30 in materials.

- Ermalee Smith makes a kitchen towel and pot-holder combination craft. Step 3 is sewing a line across the center of the towel.

My mother-in-law, Ermalee Smith, is also giving homemade Christmas gifts this year. For the last year or so, she has been making and giving away decorative kitchen towels sewn to matching pot holders in such a way that they can be hung onto a stove or cabinet door handle, simply by adding a one inch button. This is an idea that's been around for a while but can be updated simply by using materials made with modern fabrics and can be tailored to the taste of the recipient.

"I had a potholder towel that somebody made for me, and I thought I'd make myself a couple more," she said. "After that, I thought I'd just make my daughter and daughters-in-law one for Mother's Day, and then I thought I'd give all the girls at the family reunion one, and then friends at church, and then I started giving them to people for no reason. Now I have a clothes basket full of towels and pot holders in the attic to make up."

Materials needed:

• One decorative kitchen hand towel
• One potholder to coordinate with the towel
• One one inch button

Instructions:

Gather the towel at the center to match the pot holder's width. Place the towel and potholder with right sides together and stitch potholder to the towel, repeating once for strength. Sew button to the pot holder so that the loop will go around it.

Cost: about $5 per potholder towel.