A Peek Into GameBoy's Mind

Here is the sign to GameBoy's door:


And the previous sign, which is now on his closet door:


And his notebook or journal or whatever one keeps their evil plans in:

Complete with evil laugh.

2010 Ornaments

These are the ornaments I stitched for my family for 2010. They are all from the 2010 Just Cross Stitch Ornament Issue. Although they are not put together, I did get all of the actual stitching done by the end of Christmas Day, which is a huge improvement over previous years.

DH's is "Stained Glass Pine" by Blackbird Designs:


JazzBoy's is "Merry" by Miss Crescent's Crowne:


I didn't get the exactly right snowman button, so the snowman doesn't look too merry.

Mine is "Christmas Magic" by Charlotte's Web Needlework:


And GameBoy's is "Baby's First Christmas" by Angel Stitchin:

Three Months of Tatted Hearts

September's Heart:


Argh, I thought I had the name of the pattern and I don't! I don't like posting pix without attributions! I'll keep looking and add an edit if I find it. This was not one of my favorites; I particularly didn't like the thread I chose.

October Heart:


This is Be-Stitched's Tatted Rose Heart and it is easily my favorite of the year.

November's Heart:


This is Victorian Heart, done in a nice harvest color.

Except for the first one, you can link to the pattern in the name of each (I know my blog is dark and the links aren't always that visible).

I learned to do a Josephine ring and got to practice with at least two of these.

December's Heart:


Well, really, preparing for December's heart, which will be Two Hearts As One by Martha Ess. It looks complicated and I've probably made it more so by choosing metallic thread. So we'll see how it goes. I'm not sure I have enough of the silver anyway.

Catching Up After Christmas

OK, it's been over three months! What have I been doing? Well, a lot, it turns out, which means that this (and the next few) post might be a little haphazard. I have pictures and I don't know whether I've posted them. I keep thinking I have projects that I've forgotten about. I have a couple of projects that aren't quite done but are so close I can almost taste it. And in my mind I've already moved ahead to my next project. So I'll do my best.

First, I made a couple of fun ornaments that I gave to various family and friends. The JOY ornament, to the right, was from a magazine from last year. I lost the magazine, so I don't remember which one it was, and I kind of had to figure out how to do it. But I thought it turned out quite well. I just bought dice-sized wooden blocks, painted half gold and half silver, then printed out the letters in a Gothic font. I don't recall if this was a font I already had, or one I downloaded from DaFont, which is a really fun site. Then I screwed in the smallest screw eyes I could find (DH pre-drilled holes for me) and connected with split rings. Oh, and a funny story: I went to Home Depot to find the screw eyes, and wasn't having much luck. So I asked an employee. He didn't know what screw eyes were! At first I thought maybe I was calling them the wrong name, but I have since learned that that is in fact what they are called. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, since I was at Home Depot.

Next is the other ornament I made, which I just loved, but which I probably need a bit more practice on:


It's from a holiday magazine from this year, and I still can't remember it! I put it into the giant stack of magazines. If I find it, I will edit this part and put it in. It's a cute little book, and you open it up and:

It's a star! I used some Asian papers I had (images from a story about Japanese ships and text from what appears to be a Korean textbook) and so it's not that Christmas-y. but it was a lot of fun.

Another big project was the Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum Christmas angel from 1999, which you can find here. I also wanted to finish up what I had written about how I finish these. Here, I laid out the necessary supplies for finishing, here, I wrote about marking the centers, and here I showed how I centered the layers. That's where these projects stayed for... several months. It's not good to leave a straight pin in the project; it might cause a rust stain. But I had no ill effects in this case. Once centered, it's time to lace the stitching to the foam core and attach the fabric to the back. I say "attach" because I generally lace it, but this year I used double-sided tape instead. Because I use cardboard, it's not going to last forever (the front, however, is acid-free foam core and should last a long time), so I figured it was OK to use an adhesive. So here are the fronts, laced to the foam-core:


I use quilting thread. It's important that the thread be strong, but not stronger than the fabric. (Because it's easier to repair/replace thread than fabric.) Here are some laced backs:


Clearly these are not the angels. Here are the angel backs:


Clearly not laced; just taped.

Next, I attach the front to the back, using an invisible stitch. I did run into a couple of problems. First, on the checkerboard:


These are DH's ornaments which you can see here (scroll down--its the door and window). And--ta-da!--the backs are too small! I don't even know how I did that. But it was an opportunity to change things because I was not liking the checkerboard fabric for this project. A future blog post will show the (correct size) new backing fabric, which is a dark green.

And one recalcitrant angel. First, after I laced it, I saw it was off-kilter. Lacing is not that much fun for me, so I was not inclined to undo and redo it. Next, the back was larger than the front. Well, I actually thought this was a good thing: I could just use double-sided tape to attach it, and it'd be a nice little frame of blue and then I could just attach the hanging ribbon to the outside and that would be really cool!. This was the result:


I started thinking, which of the three people that I spend all this time and effort on could I send this poor angel? As I reflected further, I thought that if I had any aspirations to artistic creativity, I could not settle for poor technique and wonky results. So, sigh, I took it apart and did it right. So, attaching front to back, invisible stitch:


Well, I don't know if you can really see that. If the hanging ribbon will be between the front and back, it needs to be attached at this time. Then I attach the ribbon using a whip stitch. The ribbon I chose for this year was a metallic silver, which I sewed on with a metallic thread. It was quite the pain. I used lots and lots of Thread Heaven. One good thing that came of the off-kilter angel was that I realized I could attach the ribbon to the outside, which I did.

Voila!


OK, that's all for this post. But I promise, promise, promise to try to do better from here on out.