A little Valentine's stitch, a little late...

Late last week I was feeling the need to take another short break from the "shades-of-brown" blanket. Fortunately, I had this sweet little cross stitch waiting in the wings to be finished:

I enjoyed using a variegated floss and somewhat strategically working out where the light and dark shades would be on the design.  And then twisting the variegated with a solid red floss for the trim.  You can perhaps see the different shades in the lighter floss of the cording in this close-up:

And just look at the sweet fabric on the back:

I'm so glad I snatched up this pretty "Valentine's" fabric (from the tiny holiday section in Hobby Lobby's fabric department) when it was first discounted right after Christmas. I think it was gone by January.

To be honest, what I like most about the fabric is that it's not overly Valentine-themed. I'm already imagining other uses for it. 

While I mentioned this the first time I showed this project in progress, I'll note again (mostly for myself) that the cross stitch pattern was found in the February 2015 Just Cross Stitch magazine.  The variegated floss is DMC 48, and the solid red used in the cording is DMC 321.  To get this size cording, I used 4 lengths of each color (solid and variegated, all six strands in each length).  And the length of each color used was 5 times the perimeter of the square pillow.  I'm so glad I tried making my own cording again.  Using my Kreinik Custom Corder was a cinch this time.

 

Celtic knots are finished...

 Finally!    

I don't know why, but my feet just drug as I thought about working on these cross stitched knots the last few weeks.  Days and sometimes weeks went by when I didn't even feel like picking them up for some reason.

I'm pleased with the stitching part, but I'm not sure how I feel about the finishing part.

Thinking they were a little too bland as plain pillows, I made a trip to Hobby Lobby to see if I could find a trim that might perk them up.  I didn't have any luck with the trim, but I did come home with some fabric for an upcoming project!  More on that another time.

Back at home, I remembered once upon a time I had bought a cord-making gadget.   Of course!  I had plenty of floss - I could make my own trim!  Fortunately, once I remembered I had it, I remembered exactly where I had put it when I unpacked my craft supplies three and a half years ago.

Following the instructions that came with the Kreinik Custom Corder, I made the first cord in the two green colors I'd stitched the first knot in.

In the picture, the trim is hardly noticeable.  In person, it's more obvious, but it's underwhelming.  Clearly, I didn't use enough strands of floss.   But did I want to make it over?  No I really did not.  At least not until I made thicker cording for the second pillow - to my mind, it made sense to experiment on the second unfinished pillow before ripping out what had been done on the first one. And I figured watching a few tutorials wasn't a bad idea, either.

Ok... that's better, but I wish I had just used one of the colors this time.  The light and dark gold twisted together is a little busy.  But did I want to make it over?  No. I really really did not.

It isn't that the Kreinik is exactly hard to use, but the printed instructions are too brief, and I didn't find it as easy to use as the tutorials made it appear to be.  It didn't help that every tutorial I watched added some slightly different technique.  I also now know I used too-long strands of floss and it became unwieldy.  I needed Hub to come and hold one end while I kept my end taut (thankfully, I have long arms) as I slid the Kreinik to the middle and let it drop - to twist the cord back on itself.  One of these days, when I'm under no pressure to finish a project, I will play around with it and perhaps get the hang of it more easily. 

For now, I'm happy to be finished with this project that took way too long for what it was.  Someday I may remake the cording on the green knot pillow, but for now I'm relieved to call it done.  

Chances are, I'll be perfectly fine with its imperfectness and never change it.

Little Sheep Virtues...

I hope everyone in the U.S. had a terrific Thanksgiving.  Good times were had here, with family gathering and me experimenting a bit with lasagna and making persimmon pudding for the first time ever.  Recipes for those will come soon, hopefully.

In the last week, a Little Sheep Virtues (by Little House Needleworks) cross stitch project was completed, and I finished it and a companion piece into small pillows.

...and came up with a small display:

Holiday (any holiday) decorating around here is fairly simple, but it makes me happy to find easy ways to display some of my handwork.

Except for the Little Sheep Virtues pillows, I believe all the above patterns came from old Cross Stitch Magazines that came into my possession a few years ago.  Those turned out to be a treasure trove of cross stitching goodness.  Wait a minute... now that I think about it, I believe those "quilt" pattern ornaments may have come from a homemaking magazine - Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens, perhaps.  I don't know if those magazines exist today, but it's been decades since either (or both?) of those publications printed things like cross stitch patterns and other crafts.  Do any of you in your 60's and older remember making craft projects from those magazines?

I can't believe today begins the countdown to Christmas!  It's only just in the last few days it's finally turned cold here, and that we've finally gotten hard frosts - several days in a row since Thanksgiving.  About a month late for these parts. Or, at least, that's the way I remember it.  But the tree is up and decorated, and I'm committed to being in the Christmas spirit!

  

Did I say I was getting rid of stuff?

This is kind of a funny post to make after declaring on Wednesday that I'm getting back to my "Making Space" challenge (i.e. getting rid of stuff).  And after writing last Sunday that I planned to take my 30 year-old sewing machine to the repair shop to see if I could get it fixed.  Well, I did make a trip to the sewing machine repair shop, but since I was already in the mind to start looking for a newer replacement for my old machine, I was an easy (and willing) target for a sparkly new sewing machine when I walked into the store.

So...  now I'm the owner of a new Janome Sewist 721.  Ain't she purty?

If you're so inclined, you can embiggen the pictures by clicking on them.

It's a fairly simple mechanical machine, but it has some extra stitches and it sews soooo smoothly. 

This week, my 30 year-old machine will be posted online - free to someone who'll come and get it.  I've had it apart and oiled it and gotten it to (sort of) work, but it needs for someone to remove more than just the top and bottom of the machine.  It looks like it will require removing multiple pieces of moving machinery so that the old dried-out grease can be cleaned out and replaced.  From, watching Youtube videos, I think for a person who's interested in doing all that, it might be worth it, but now that I've got a shiny new machine, I'm hard pressed to want to do that.  And truth be told, I'm as likely to break the old one as to fix it, so I'd rather let someone else have a shot at it.

Also this past week, I got some fun mail.  I don't recall where I heard of Cross Stitching Supplies just north of Indianapolis, but I'm so happy to have discovered them.  I ordered some cross stitch fabrics (in colors I hadn't been able to get at my regular online cross stitch resource), and a bunch of overdyed floss - since they offered a nice discount on the first order.

I can't  wait to dive in and start stitching something new.

Lindsey, the owner of Cross Stitching Supplies is a good communicator.  She even notified me that she was giving me a partial refund on one of the fabrics because it had a random dye spot on it (that didn't belong).  I thought that was very nice, but I imagined I might have to sacrifice half the piece of fabric (for what I wanted to use it for, anyway).  But when it arrived and I saw her hand-written note on the fabric, I looked it over and it was the tiniest spot that didn't appear at all on the opposite side, so the whole piece of fabric is totally useable!   

It's pretty handy that Lindsey is located on the north side of Indy while I'm on the southside, so my order got here lickety split.  I will definitely be checking first with Cross Stitching Supplies when I want to place an order in the future. 

~~~~~

And on the crafting end of things, I managed to finish off more of the little stitches I posted about a few weeks ago - some of which have been waiting years (okay... decades - lol) for this day...

They aren't perfect, and I'm still learning some things about finishing small cross stitch projects into mini-pillows, but I'm so glad to have FFO's rather than the small bits of projects these were before. 

And that, dear reader, is all she wrote!

Cross stitch smalls...

It was tempting to skip posting again this week, but crafting mojo is so elusive lately, I thought I'd better post while I have something current to show.

In my last post, I was making plans for finishing some older cross stitch projects.  Well... I finally stitched a few up into little pillows:   

The hardest part was just deciding to do it.  Though, it did take a bit of time to cut everything out, iron on interfacing (to make the projects nice and smooth - I heard somewhere to do that).  And I left too small of openings for turning them right side out, so I had to unpick some stitches.

But seriously...  It's embarrassing how long it took me to finally set myself down to do this.  I've had the cross stitching finished on this one since last October:

In the process, I found out my 30 year-old Singer sewing machine is frozen.  I'm thinking all it needs is a good cleaning and re-oiling, and whatever a repair shop does to get a machine in good working order again.  Meanwhile, I'm sewing on my MIL's nearly 70 year-old Singer and it hums along so nicely.  It's tempting to just chuck my old frozen one, but it is very handy for quickly zig zagging edges, and creating buttonholes - whereas doing these things on my MIL's machine requires fiddling with attachments.  So sometime this upcoming week I'm thinking of biting the bullet and getting my old machine to a repair shop. Wish me well in that plan. 

And that's all she wrote!