A Flurry of Finishes

Because I've been absent lately, I've quite a few finishes to share! These three are gifts whose recipients potentially read this blog, so for those I was waiting until they received their gifts to share. Other than that, I have no real excuses for not posting until now, unless you count a general lack of time on the computer and some pondering I've been doing on the general intent of my blog. But all of that is lame and boring, so on to the pictures!

These three small items were completed in October. All were sent off to various members of the Cross Stitch Forum, for various reasons. You'll see a certain theme in the finishing of these (hint: the theme is called "I don't have a sewing machine").

This ornament is from a pattern called 'Peaceful Christmas', designed by Milady's Needle. I stitched this for the ornament exchange on the forum (I'll share the ornament I received in another post soon). My recipient was MoonChild, who among other things said she liked traditional themes and earth tones. When I saw this chart at my local stitching store, I thought it was perfect. I also picked up the wool backing fabric there as well.

I had such a fun time stitching up this Lizzie*Kate snippet. The backing fabric is the same kind of wool as the ornament above. I improvised the thread colors a bit with what I could find in my own stash, but I think it turned out perfect. It was pretty tempting to just keep it for myself, but I sent this along with several other goodies in the Cross Stitch Forum Stashmas exchange to knottylamb. This was my first time making a pincushion. I couldn't find a tutorial that I liked, so I made up my own method of finishing. It's filled with the plastic beans that you put in stuffed animals. I tested it out before I sent it, and I think it works pretty well. 

The last mini project I did in October was this tiny, adorable ornament from the Just Cross Stitch 2011 Ornament Issue (Winter Squirrel by The Victoria Sampler). I made this for Squirrel on the forum because as soon as I saw it I knew that I had to make it for her. Because she sent me a bingo prize a couple of months ago, I had her address and was able to surprise her. :) I loved stitching on this one.

As you may be able to tell, all of these were finished in the same way. I used a blanket stitch to attach a backing fabric, and stuffed them with poly-fil (or in the case of the pincushion, plastic beads). For the ornaments, I attached a ribbon at the top so they could be hung. I knew that I wanted to make the ornaments in pillow form, but I couldn't find any tutorials for such things that didn't require a sewing machine. I definitely see room for improvement, but I'm overall pretty happy with how they turned out. I hope to perfect this method in the future and share a tutorial (which would be my first!). 

I've had a couple of other finishes, but I'm going to share those another time. 

Happy holidays and happy stitching!