Progress on Bethlehem

This morning I took advantage of having no plans to sit and do a bit of work on my little town of bethlehem wall hanging.

I did a couple of practise pieces to make sure I could do the blanket stitch and the cording ok with the wadding behind the hanging itself. Funnily enough, that was the part that had put me off getting started because I knew I would have to spend time doing something that would not be part of the finished product. But I was glad I did as it enabled me to change the tension slightly and feel confident that I could do this. And it didn’t really take that long!

Then I got on with all the blanket stitch down the sides of the buildings, stuck the star on, and got one of the trees stitched on.

It’s hard to take good photos of it on my camera but hopefully these give you a bit of an idea.

Annoyingly, for some reason, the stitches didn’t all end up an even length, which I assume might be to do with the feed dogs not always catching the wadding on the back. But, at the end of the day, no-one is likely to look too closely at it, and the overall effect shouldn’t be impacted too much by it.

This evening I then threaded every end of silver thread through to the back and tied it to the base thread. It took a while but I’m glad I’ve got it done.

Next step is to sew cord around all of the turrets and rooves, and across the foreground. Then I’ll need to get some help with attaching the backing in a neat way before I quilt the star.

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Cute dachshund

Today I was in the mood for another quick and easy project, so I got out the little felt dachshund keyring kit that I was sent in one of my stitching santa parcels.

It was easy to cut out

and then I changed the order suggested, and sewed on the eyes and ears before sewing the two body pieces together.

Then I decided to use blanket stitch to join the body pieces together, even though back stitch was suggested. I discovered the reason for their suggestion when I got to the top part where you sew the ribbon and label in! But I kept going and just brought the needle back through the label before completing the blanket stitch.

He’s meant to have a little red neckerchief but it looked like it was strangling him (I may have stuffed him a bit too full!) so I didn’t go with that idea.

He’ll be a cute keyring, or ‘dangly bag thing’ to send to someone!

Plus, while catching up on a couple of episodes of masterchef I added a few rows to my C2C blanket.

Working with sissy… And a little bit more crochet

Well, since she’s been named, poor sissy (my sewing machine) hasn’t been brought out to play. But today was the day!

I wanted to make a little present to say thankyou to a teacher in school who gave me a beautiful faux fur long gilet that she was wearing for world book Day (in order to dress up as a bear!). She didn’t like it as she thinks she is too short for it and she thought it would suit me better as I am tall! Well, I love it, and it has certainly kept me warm during the snow.

I decided to make a little bag that she could use in school, maybe to put things in for the kids to pull out etc. But I wanted it to be a bit interesting too.

I had this gorgeous material with little woodland creatures on, so decided to copy the bunny and blanket stitch on a felt version to the front of the bag.

Of course this meant I had to line the bag to hide the stitching, so this is the result of a full morning’s work (not least because I unsuccessfully tried satin stitching the detail on the ears and tail before unpicking it all at it looked too messy). I’m really, really pleased with the result though and think it was totally worth all the effort. I really love the sparkly ribbon that I had in my stash… I’ve never bought ribbon… Just kept anything that came my way!

This evening I carried on with a bit more of the second octagon for my top. Here they are next to each other. The one on the left is made with a smaller hook, and has one row less than the one on the right. I’m thinking I’ll add that round to it and then continue both with the bigger hook and they’ll be fine for front and back with no frogging required! What do you think? Can you see flaws in this plan that I haven’t spotted? Let me know more if you can! All help and advice will be gratefully received 💞