Christmas Finishes Before Thanksgiving!

I'm happy to say that I have a couple of finishes this week, just when we're getting into the hectic part of the holidays when I often feel like I'm a step behind.  My first finish is my fabric wreath!  When I saw this project online, I thought it would be kind of cute, but it turned out very pretty.  It will definitely brighten up a wall in our home over the Christmas holidays.  You can find the directions to make one of these wreaths here.  A couple of things though.  The straw wreaths were a little hard to find.  I finally ended up buying the last two 10" wreaths at Hobby Lobby.  It also calls for the use of a pinking rotary cutter, and as you may have read in my previous post, that just didn't work at all.  Never did find out what the deal with that was.  So if you already have pinking shears, you can save yourself some money and use those.  Just take a break while cutting out the fabric squares or your hand will fall off.  I didn't do the ribbon hanger because I'm going to hang the wreath on an existing nail and I didn't want that to show.  So I threaded a piece of fishing line into a large needle and poked it through the wreath in the back, knotted it into a loop, and now have a no-show hanger.  Oh, and use a thicker Phillips-head screwdriver to push in your fabric squares.

My second finish is my bellpull.  I stitched all three Christmas Box Ornaments by Country Garden Stitchery on one piece of fabric and found a nice bellpull hanger and there you have it.  It needs a good ironing around the edges, I know.  I was glad to be done with the metallic floss portion of the stitching, but it did make the finished product oh-so-pretty!

I wanted to show you another finish that I can't take credit for because it's Sheila's!  I believe this is from the 2010 issue of the JCS Ornament Issue.  I should know this, I realize.  But seeing as how this is her first ornament finish, I think it's pretty impressive.  So now when I want to do an ornament finish with the ribbon and beads, I'll know who to consult.  Very pretty, Sheila!

Also this week, I signed up for Daffycat's TUSAL.  That's "Totally Useless Stitch-a-long".  It just looked like fun.  You can find out more about it at Daffycat's blog on her November 15 post.  People probably think we stitchers are a little nuts for saving our floss ends, or orts, in pretty jars, but that's fine.  And there are currently 152 of us signed up for the TUSAL, so who's nuts?!

My serger continues to vex me.  I worked on it a little more this week and got it to where I thought the threading was absolutely correct.  Not so much.  It's still not making the chain when I turn the wheel.  Hmmmm.  I think I'm going to have to do what I've been avoiding all along -- unthread the thing completely and then start from scratch.  Someone online thought it would be a good idea to take your serger to a sewing machine repair place to have them thread it for you, but that would probably cost more than I paid for it to begin with!  But, just to let you know, the serger has not defeated me!  I am determined!

I just want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  What a great time to think about what we have and how thankful we are for it.  Until next time.