Double knot stitch Done with 8 strands (so that it would be thick to make big knots) of Madeira Silk.
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I have got my Box Top restarted, for one of the seams in the centre where I am doing cream on cream I chose a thick rayon thread that stitches up with a lot of texture and then looked back through my sampler to find a stitch that would suit the thread, I chose Detail 592 which is a detached chain stitch variation.
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Firstly I have found and Painted a Birthday Cake charm to put with the Birthday section.
The events on this section of my sampler are from November…The Remembrance day Poppy is bordering on being to big to use but my son gave it to me for my sampler and I like that he takes an interest in it so I used it (and OOps, spell check has just pointed out to me that I have misspelled remembrance, not sure how I will fix that one, might just leave it because those that know me know that I can’t spell or I could put a red slash through it like the teachers put all through my school books).
The third event on this section is in memory of a lovely day I spent with friends visiting the Japanese Garden at Cowra as well as the vast garden they have a display of other things Japanese amongst them a collection of Dolls, simple shapes with so much personality, I fell in love with them…
Because the shapes are so simple I thought that it may be possible to make a tiny one, I found some cylindrical shaped wooden beads and used a craft knife and sand paper to shape them and then my sister painted them and used beads to shape the hair, I photographed them standing on a cotton reel to give an idea of there size, aren’t they just so cute.
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Last night I said that I had found a couple of seams on my box top that I hadn’t blogged…I photographed them today and had the images ready to write the post but something prompted me to do an extra search and I found that I had blogged them (they are Detail 12 and Detail470), I hadn’t checked the box top category which I have now corrected…but it leaves me without a prepared post for tonight so I have filled in with a photo of a Cosmos flower flower from my garden.
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My New Years Resolution was to finish my Box top, I thought a good start would be to get it out and see where I was up to so that I can start thinking about it…It is further along than what I remembered, which is good and there is a couple of seams done which I haven’t blogged but they will have to wait to be photographed in daylight because the velvets that the stitching is on does funny things under the flash.
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Click Here For instructions How to make a Christmas Stocking
 
The last thing to done to finish the Christmas stockings is to add a hanger with bells and trim…Click here for instructions how to twist ribbon for the bells…For the twisted ribbon I had some lovely red ribbon for the stocking on the right but it was just to soft to hold any sort of twisting, until this point I had been alternating the red and green trims doing each a different colour but I didn’t have another red ribbon to hand and picked up a some green ribbon, I did ask my son what colour the ribbon should be and he said red because the other one was green but said I you expect to be red and I like to do the unexpected so the question is does a green ribbon suit this stocking, and we decided that it did and I put red back up into the area with a red christmas light (this one is bigger than the little green christmas light in last nights detail)…Both the Christmas lights ended up on the same stocking instead of one on each, a little oops in concentration but then I was doing right for what was visually best for the hanger trim and again having them both on the same stocking is the unexpected which I like.
  On the inside of the stocking I usually use beads to cover the stitches from sewing the hanger and trim on but for these stockings I have used christmas bauble buttons to cover the stitches.
I have just realized that with Finished in the subject I maybe should have images of the finished stockings here but they are going to have to wait till tomorrow.
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When I am working on a project I have way more ideas and charms than I can ever fit on but as I go I filter them out and now when I am down to the last couple of charms needed to finish this stocking it is a matter of deciding which of the many charms I most want to fit on and then seeing if I can make them fit, some I can find a place for others just won’t go on.
The apple in this detail is the fruit that the cherries on the other stocking match with. The apple is for The Big Apple, New York and I wanted to match it with something that represented the USA, first thought was a flag but that thought didn’t last long, still I have a small stars and strips bead which I had hoped to find a place for but some bits just don’t fit and I couldn’t find a place to put it…Actually I almost gave up on the apple to, I was surprised that the apple was hard to fit as it is red and green and very Christmassy in colour and am often amazed at how something little can make a difference, When I just had the apple and the candy canes where they are they looked as if they were sitting on top of the piece not a part of it, then when I dropped the little green light next to them the grouping worked.
The thongs are a match for the beaded thongs that I did on one of the original stockings, they are a tiny charm and I tucked them in the corner where the teddy bear might have left them before he sat down.
If I have confused anybody with which stocking is which and what is on which stocking, I do apologize but I am not surprised, towards the end of making them I did have to have them both in front of me while I was thinking about them else I was having ideas for a seams and embellishments that didn’t work on the stocking I was thinking of at the time.
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I would normally not put so many charms/motifs so close together as these 3 are but I do like how this lot looks on the block…
The iron on tree motif worked well to cover a glitch in the stitching and the star on the tree links it to the fabric above…I chose the Cherry charm as a pair up with a piece of fruit that will go on the other stocking, cherries are a seasonal Christmas fruit in Australia but not be in the northern hemisphere where these stockings are to live so I wanted to hide the cherries and I liked the way they blended into the holly print on the fabric behind them…The Gingerbread house is there because I still felt that the stocking needed something else so I was going through the Christmas charms/buttons that I had and when I put the gingerbread house in the curve of the stitching it just looked so right that I looked no further, I had found the something that this stocking needed to finish it.
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In the Victorian era spiders webs were considered a symbol of good luck and it has become traditional to stitch a spiders web into crazy quilts…I don’t put spider webs onto every piece of crazy work I do sometimes it suitable to a block and I didn’t put a spiders web on any of the first 4 stockings but since then I have learned that there is a Christmas Spider Story and for that story I have stitched a web onto one of the twin stockings and put a spider on the other.
There seems to be several versions of the Christmas spider story This Christmas spider story seems to be the more common version but I did like This version of the Christmas spider story.
Click here for instructions how to stitch a spider web .
 
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With all the seams done it was time to put the names on the tops of the stockings…Stem Stitch done with a red rayon thread and a green silk thread.
The fabric on the left was not easy to stitch on and rayon thread was not a good choice of thread to use on it but It was the red colour I wanted and like the finished texture of the stitch…and I like what happened to the lettering because of it, my original intention was to fill in the spaces on the letters but when the red rayon on the gold satin was so difficult to stitch with I decided not to fill the spaces and I like how light and airy the letters look.
I finished the tops with a butterfly on one and an angel on the other…The angel is the same charm that I put on the cover of the book but unlike the one on the book that I intended to be hidden this one I wanted to be seen, even though it is a very tiny charm the fine paint work done by my son Sam does make it visible.
On my sampler I have written twins to represent the type of stitching and the threads that I used, I thought that it would be a nice way to finish of the twin stocking section on my sampler.
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