We have a phrase here of ‘doing a round robin’, usually meaning a road trip going from A to B to C to D to get various things done. I never wondered where it came from, well I learnt yesterday that the collective noun for robins is a round, though I’m still not sure how it came to mean a round trip! Mind you, having googled it there’s lots of meanings for the phrase round robin!
At the Harrogate show I bought a metre of very pretty robin fabric, it’s more home furnishing weight really, it was an impulse buy (not like me at all!!) but I decided it would be rather nice for tote bags. I’d got three little presents to make and I decided this would be perfect.
I didn’t want to make the bag just in the robin fabric, mainly because things like handles add a surprising amount to what’s needed. I found in my stash a duckegg blue fabric which coordinated nicely. I usually make my totes 16″ square, I cut the robin fabric to about 10″, leaving the bottom strip in the plain fabric.

I made a simple lining, no pockets or anything as I wanted it to be a fairly lightweight for storing and carrying round. They’re not as round bottomed as they look in the photo, they actually have a gusseted flat bottom!
They were pretty quick to make once I’d worked out what I was doing with the first one, hopefully they’ll like and use them.
I had a couple of strips left over from cutting out which had a couple of robins on. I used one to make a card. My Embroiderers Guild do a Christmas card swop, you make one card, sign it and pop it in the bag and take another one, so everyone gets a nice handmade card. Obviously I wanted something fairly quick so I decided to embroider over the robin.

I just used feather, fly, buttonhole and herringbone stitches, together with a few lazy daisies and some french knots. He was fun to stitch and pretty quick too. I cut him out, frayed the edges and stitched him onto felt which could then be glued to the card.

I wanted to make a little something to slip inside a Christmas card for someone. My original plan was to make a flat decoration, but it was begging to be stuffed!! I just used a little lace, some ricrac and a soft brown cotton with tiny feathers on it. I added the buttons to the corners to hide where the ricrac hanger attaches. I think it’s rather sweet, I’m tempted to make myself one too!

I just need to get everything wrapped and in the post – I haven’t even written my Christmas cards yet!