June Heart, Why I Haven't Posted (aka Finishing, Part 1), and What's Next

So here, below, is the tatted heart for June. It's called 34 Hearts, by Emma Crew, and I found it free on the internet, but cannot link to it, because it seems to have disappeared. Which was a little frustrating, because somehow, my printout didn't have the end of the last sentence: "After completing each heart..." What? Eat a chocolate? Take a walk? I never did find out for sure, but I think it had to do with shaping each little heart. In any case, I was nervous to start it, but it was a lot of fun, and I learned how to make heart-shaped rings:


The plain fact of why I haven't posted is that what the red backpack contained was Finishing work. And I just hate Finishing. I like how it looks, I like the feeling of a completed project, I like to see my improvement over the years, but the process is, for me, deadly dull. So this is all I've accomplished:

That's right, I've laced two out of three backs. True, there was a little bit of work, and that's why I'm calling this section "Finishing, Part 1." First, I collected supplies:

The acid-free foam-core, cardboard, and batting are all cut to the size of the stitching plus about 3/4 inches all around. Or whatever looks good. But they're all the same size. The backing fabric is cut to the same size as the stitched piece, ready for lacing. The ribbon will be cut later in the process. And of course, I need the finished stitching:

Wow, that could do with some pressing:

Much better, although I have learned my lesson about wrinkles and linen and will not be keeping my fabrics and projects balled up in the future. Sadly, I have 30+ projects in totes, all with squished-up pieces of linen. Below shows the lacing of the backing fabric over the cardboard:

Usually, I use quilting thread, but you can use whatever is handy, and obviously I didn't bother to match. I took a really long piece of thread, lined up the fabric with the cardboard, folded down the corner flaps and threaded corner to corner, in a sort of miter. Then I pulled the sides down and laced across. With the stitched parts I will tack down the miters, to make them crisper, but here I obviously didn't.

And that's as far as I got. I decided the best thing to do would be to add in some of the fun. So I pulled out the next tote:


And it contains my 2009 Christmas ornaments from the JCS Ornament Issue:

Pieces of wrinkled linen:

Bundles of threads:


I did get it sorted out. Which I will continue in my next post.