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!

The Stitch From Stash (SFS) SAL is hosted by Mel at Epic Stitching!