Red and cream draught excluder

The grand plan for Christmas 2013 was to do handmade gifts! All experienced sewists are probably nodding wisely right now - as you would guess, it didn't take me long to realise that if I wanted to do all my gifts handmade, I should probably have started in January! However, I did manage to make quite a few presents, and one of them was this lovely draught excluder for my mum-in-law. My in-laws have a beautiful big Victorian house up in north Wales - it's absolutely lovely, but drafts definitely come with the territory in a house like that.

I found lots of tutorials for draft excluders on Pinterest, but the one I liked best was this one. It was simple to follow - although I did increase it slightly because I knew their doors were likely a little larger than ours.

You might recognise the fabric pattern - it's the one that I used for my roman blind - but the red version! I just loved it so much that I got some more from Calico for the draft excluder.

A handy way to create the ends for the draft excluder...

I sewed the pieces up with my machine - leaving a little hole for the stuffing - and then stuffed it with the guts of a pillow which Pete had thoroughly mangled!!  I attempted to hand-sew the final bit together, but my hand sewing is appalling, so I ended up with the glue-gun, which was a perfectly adequate way of finishing it!

The finishing touch...my little 'handmade by Rebekah' label...!