Easter Egg Finish! + Craftsy Feature

My Easter Variation of "Christmas My Way" by Keslyn's Designs

Wow, has it ever been a hectic few weeks here! Mostly happily so, but very busy nonetheless :) My apologies to anyone who is waiting on e-mail from me! Hope to remedy that and resume my bloggy browsing ASAP. I just wanted to quickly share the Final Finish for my little Easter Egg ornament! It turned out a little - okay, a LOT - differently than I had envisioned, but that always seems to be the way, doesn't it? ;)

Also, thanks so much for all the lovely comments and encouragement you left on my last post, and the compliments on my colourway! Floss is really fun to play with :)

Here is the original project - from Just Cross Stitch's 2011 Christmas Ornaments Special - and my variation together for easy comparison (full details in this post):

For this finish, I made the corded trim out of the DMC 3846, a lovely turquoise:

Originally, I had intended to use the grosgrain ribbon I bought with my backing fabric (see it at the end of this post) to make a ruched trim with a ribbon bow (a little like this tutorial by Lynn B. @ Happiness Is Cross Stitching, but with longer tails) at the top. But: a) the turquoise ribbon was slightly off the floss colour, b) Two meters of ribbon was not nearly enough for ruching, and c) it just plain refused to work out!

So I just used what was left of my floss to make simple hand-twisted cording :)

What looks like a third loop in the middle is just the hanging loop - to make that, I cut a section off the end of the cording, made a loop, and attached it separately inside the top of the ornament before I ladder-stitched the top seam together, as I usually do.

To attach the cording and leave enough length to work with, I pinned the middle of the cording to the bottom center of the sewn-up ornament, leaving two long tails on either side. The cording was sewn down with one strand of floss, looped over the twists to help define them. Then when I reached the top again, I looped the "ears" over each other to form the bow, and wrapped my sewing floss around the center until it looked right to me. I did try tying the bow, but I couldn't get it to lie right!

Then I cut the ends to the same length and frayed the threads below the knots to make little tassels. Although I intended to leave the ends lose, they sort of flopped around so I tacked them with a stitch above each knot. They still aren't perfectly symmetrical by any means, but it was the closet I could get. I deliberately made the tacking stitches loose to leave a little give so I can adjust the way the ends hang.

And after a difficult start, when I had to discard my first backing piece because it frayed from putting in and taking out stitches, I *finally* got my motifs lined up:

I wanted the bunny talking to the little chick, and his buddy bunny with the floomy tail, to be the center and it took some finagling to keep the chick's wing in the frame! Happily, I'm still in love with the fabric, and I have plenty left over for next Easter :)

Feature on the Craftsy Blog

Some exciting news: My Chicken Scratch Sampler on Aida was recently featured in an article called "The Story Behind Amish Embroidery", written by Leigh Bowser for the Craftsy Blog! The site is also currently hosting the Lifetime of Craftsy contest.

Happy Victoria Day to Fellow Canadians!

Although I am confused, as always, as to why the 24th of May is celebrated a whole week early (it's got something to do with the Government's Holiday Timetable, or so I've been told), I'm nevertheless looking forward to the long weekend :) Whatever you do and wherever you go, I hope you have wonderful weather and a great time!