Just in the St. Nick of time

My stocking is finished!

Now I just have to wait and see if I have been naughty or nice....

Merry Christmas to you all!

Time for a Nap!

I'm done my big stitched napping quilt. It is washed and dried and cozy and ready for a long winter's nap. I can hardly wait and I am so glad I decided to keep it for myself!

 I am very happy with it but I don't think I will ever be silly enough to quilt (even big stitching) through flannel again. And it was thick flannel!

Slowly I have been stitching my redwork Santa and it is looking like I will have a stocking in time for Christmas! My Dad asked me yesterday if it was going to be big...I think that's a good sign!

We decorated the house yesterday, so we are finally looking festive. Christmas is a time for memories so I thought I would share some craft memories from many years past. This nativity is about 25 years old. I made it for my parents when I was in my very early 20's. It still goes out every year! My family enjoys pointing out that baby Jesus has no nose! Who would want to smell a manger anyways?

And not quite so old are these paper mache Santa's, though they are getting close to 20 years old!

Back to my secret sewing...

Merry Stitching!

It's the time of year for secrets!

I've had a VERY productive bit of time off. I have spent almost the whole week in my sewing room working on a few projects. Even the weather cooperated to keep me inside....

The main project I have been working on is a big secret...it is that time of year. I'm allowed some secrets! And this one I am not telling anyone about. But I will give a hint...here is part of my cleanup!

While I was in my sewing room and looking for things I stumbled upon a bin and looked inside and discovered some half finished needle punched Christmas tree decorations I had forgotten about.

I got organized and made some tea dye, took a leap of faith and sprayed them down with my tea solution. And oh my, they seemed a little dark. But I left them to dry and now they are looking not too bad. Next time though I will make the tea solution a little weaker.

Now I have to find some backing and get them finished. Hopefully I will get them done by the end of the weekend!

My redwork Santa Christmas stocking is all traced and ready to go. For the tracing I used a red .01 Pigma pen. The line is quite fine and very easy to see.

I read a little online about redwork and embroidery and if I should be stabilizing my fabric or even if I would like the batting (a very thin batting...like thermore) under it when I stitched. I did a quick sample of all 3...

The interfaced sample...I used a very lightweight interfacing...

It was easy to stitch through but it was also easy to miss the hole to go back down. Another problem was that the fabric had lost most of it's natural stretch so you couldn't really pull to help the stitches lie flatter.

Next is the batting....

I found I had to be pretty careful to get my stitches back in the right hole with the batting as well. Even though the batting was very thin, it still added too much bulk. And it was too puffy looking.

Finally the fabric by itself...

Now that was more like it! Great stitches! I think I found my method!

And, just fyi, I used 2 strands of floss for all my samples.

I am planning on going quilting this week with a local group who meets on Mondays. I'll be bringing my stocking to work on. Hopefully I'll get a really good start on it.

And finally....

I have noticed a few bloggers getting excited about making knitted Christmas balls. Well, the excitement rubbed off on me...look what came in the mail yesterday!!!!

Now I am waiting for the wool I ordered to arrive. I hope it's soon. I can't wait to get started!

I have a few days left of sewing room bliss so off I go...

Happy Stitching!