More Progress

I'm on quite a roll.

This is a MillHill pin cushion I beaded and cross-stitched quite a while ago (two years, maybe?), but I never finished. All it took was filling a little cloth bag with emery (to keep needle and pin tips sharp) and sewing it shut (trickier than it should be, and I think I dropped some emery into my sewing machine YAY), then folding the fabric around the little bag and slip-stitching that shut. Now I have a nice, weighty storage spot for needles and pins by my machine.

This was a project from the 2008 Just Cross-Stitch Christmas Ornaments issue. I received the magazine that September, and to ensure I'd finish the ornament in time (ha!), I even bought the kit for it rather than searching for the fabric and threads myself. I did manage to finish the stitching a few days after that Christmas, but then it languished. But hooray! Earlier this week I made and attached the beaded garland (modifying it slightly from the pattern, so that the ends are beads not thread), and then sewed it to the backing fabric. The pattern did not give directions for how to finish it with the enclosed silk ribbon, so I picked the easiest way: wrapping the ribbon around the seam (especially necessary because I was too lazy to pick a matching thread) and tacking it in place with leftover beads. I tied the ends in a bow at the top, and added another length for the hanger. That hanger is not sewed on very securely, though, so I suspect I will have to redo it. But it is finished!

This is the sewing machine organizer I wrote about previously. Having cut out the fabric, I couldn't bear to let the project languish again -- I really need those pockets to keep me from losing my thread clippers and seam ripper. So I ventured up there late one night and whipped it up in just an hour or two. Looking at it now, I see I forgot to clip some threads; where's that clipper . . . .

Next up: finishing a tote bag. I cut the pieces out a few years ago, so it's about time I sew it up.