Thursday, August 28, 2014

SFS # 8 - No Stash, But A Small Finish!


August always seems to be a time of change for me and my family, and this year has proven to be no exception! It's been a rollercoaster month - some highs, some lows - but hopefully it'll all work out for the better in the end :) This Autumn will certainly be interesting at least LOL! My apologies in being so behind in e-mails and blog visits. Thank you very much, as usual, for your patience, and I'll be trying to catch up soon!

I haven't had much time for stashing or stitching, but I did put the backing fabric and floss I bought in June (SFS #6) to good use, and managed to finish this ornament:


The design is my Spring Variation of the Just Nan "Christmas Hearts" freebie, which I stitched for my second entry in the JN SAL. I was hoping to share this little finish with the SAL as well, but unfortunately some negative experiences have caused Zeb to put the JN SAL on hiatus. I really enjoyed the two months I joined in, and I'd like to thank Zeb for all of her hard work and for creating a wonderful Stitch Along!!!

Here is the back of my ornament, which is just plain pink 100% cotton fabric:


I assembled it in my usual way, using a padded insert made with two layers of quilt batting stitched together. The biggest challenge was the cording, because I couldn't find any commercial burgundy cording to match. I've never been good with making floss cording. My Stitchy Guru Mother is, and has a surefire method using a hand drill fitted with a cup hook for the twisting, but I twisted this one all by hand myself.

Although I bought two skeins of floss to make the cording, I ended up only using one, and I tried something different by tying a knot at one end of the cording to make the hanging loop first, instead of doing the loop and the cording separately.


In all honesty, this is best hand-cording I've ever made, and I'm very proud of it :)


Not only do I have trouble making it, but I have MAJOR problems sewing it on! With commercial cording, the twists are hard (wrapped around a firm core) and it's easy - well, relatively speaking LOL - to pop your thread into the spaces between the twists. Floss cording is soft, often has to be re-twisted and smoothed as you go, and will show your stitches, so it's very tricky to hide your thread. Or at least, I find it so ;)


As you can see, the twists aren't perfectly even, but it's a big improvement for me :) I've tried many methods of attachment over the years, but the combination I ended up with here is the best yet. I'm going to try to recreate it sometime in future, and if it works again I'll definitely share! Sometimes I find myself doing things with no idea of how I'm actually doing them, and this was the case here LOL!


And I also think this is the best corner I've ever turned :) It makes me ridiculously happy every time I see it. All my corners are squishy instead of square, no matter how much I poke and prod at them! Now, if only I could get all four the same...


My SFS Spending for August, Month #8:

This is the first time I've had zero spending for two months in a row (yay!), but it was completely by accident not by design :) So I spent $0.00, adding the monthly total of $25.00 to my Bank, for a grand total of $122.03 saved! So I did make it over the $100 Bank mark, which makes me ridiculously happy for some strange reason LOL.

But I don't think this trend will be continuing. I love Autumn and have a few projects lined up, and it's getting near the time to start thinking about Christmas Gift Stitching (ugh - it's still WAY to early for me!), so I can foresee some Serious Stashing going on in September :) That's actually pretty funny, because my timing is off as always - Mel generously gave us a bonus $25 to spend this month. But that's always how it seems to go with me: a day late and a dollar short, as they say ;) I'm also thinking about my Sampler of Samples, so I've got some Stash Diving to look forward to as well!