Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Making Progress

I am enjoying stitching so much! I don't know why I sometimes stop doing it for a while. Life just gets in the way.

My Finishing task for the day was to mark the centers of the foam core and the batting. This will help me to have a centered Finished Project. I figured out how to do this last December and I must say that it really made a difference in the appearance of the final product:


And here is my progress on DH's ornament; I may have the stitching done on this by the end of the week:

OK, crossing my fingers that I can keep up the momentum!

Monday, June 28, 2010

What's Next, Continued

Continuing from the previous post, here are 2009's Christmas ornaments. First, for GameBoy, "Christmas Stitching" by My Mark:

For JazzBoy, "Let It Snow" by Glory Bee:

For DH, "Winter Sampler" by Little House Needleworks:


For me, "What Can I Give Him?" by Forget-Me-Nots in Stitches:

Notice how my piece of fabric was nicely pressed and stored on a trousers' hanger. And finally, I picked a second ornament, "Penny Angel" by The Primitive Needle:


Looks pretty lonely. That was the only thread I could find, for some reason. I also think I was not able to find paillettes for the Forget-Me-Nots in Stitches project.

In any case, since I had already started GameBoy's, I decided to jump right in there. Immediately, I felt much more calm and relaxed than I have in weeks. I decided not to torture myself with Finishing. It does need to be done, and now I will alternate doing small Finishing steps with fun stitching.

I took these pictures Saturday afternoon; by Saturday evening I had finished GameBoy's:


Makes me wonder why I put it off. Today I started on DH's. I started at about 1:10 and stopped at about 3. And here's where I am.:

So I'm really, really hoping to have more regular posts, showing both stitching and Finishing progress. Really.

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.