A Fully Finished Object and a New Start

It's been a very busy week, as my lack of posts likely indicates. I have managed to fully finish Rejoice Tree after discarding several methods of finishing and sort of making up my own. 

Instead of a cube finish, I ended up using a large piece of styrofoam and I kind of made up my own finish. I didn't find a good sized ribbon to use, and since I had purchased stainless steel pins, I decided I liked how it looked all pinned up. 

What do you think?

close up of the pins

Thank you for all your comments on my decision regarding Vermont and At Our House for my co-worker. As most of you mentioned, cross stitching is about something we enjoy, and I unexpectedly received the chart just in time for Xmas, and since I had first seen it I had though of stitching it for him and his family. 

Therefore, Vermont will go back in the WIP file and I started on At Our House, even though the fabric was all wrinkled and necessitated a little washing. 

Here's the model stitch again:

My floss toss:

The colours are pretty similar, but I'm using a dark purple (WDW Taffeta) instead of brown for the lettering. I'm not a huge fan of brown in general, so I tend to change it out. 

As I said, I even made a start!

And then I decided I should be good and iron it, so I tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and finally decided to throw it in the washer. The fabric is hand-dyed, but colour fast, so I wrapped it in a towel and washed it with a very little bit of laundry detergent. The detergent we use is free of scents, dyes, etc. 

It came out really well! I was always terrified to try this, but those creases were impossible!!!

I wish I'd taken photos, but it's flat now, and that's the important thing. I've also learned a valuable lesson in ironing first, before stitching, no matter how impatient I am. Especially if it will be a gift for someone else. :)

This is not a new photo, but I also finished the stitching around the squares on the Song of the Weather hardanger afghan! The only difference is the blank areas are filled in, so I didn't bother with another photo. 

The plan now is to use my sewing machine to do a quick stitch on the black fabric I've stitched the afghan to and keep the edge from fraying. I hope to manage that tonight and then tomorrow I can finish the edge of the afghan itself. 

To make sure I'm up to the task I practiced with my sewing machine over the weekend and I made a project bag. I loosely used The Twisted Stitcher's tutorial here. I didn't have the right size of interface to put between my fabric, so I only used fabric. I forgot to take a photo, but I had some longish fabric and I managed to make a project bag large enough to store my two scroll frames, so it works! And it was great practice. 

DH is actually a lot more comfortable with the sewing machine than I am since he took Home Ec. and I took Parenting (easy credit). He was able to teach me a lot of the finer details. 

Wish me luck and thank you for all your wonderful comments!

Happy Stitching,

Tiffstitch