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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 When I was stitching the twin stockings last year I had to decide whether To intersperse records of events with the stocking stitches on the sampler or whether to keep the stocking stitches together as a block and add the record of events after the stockings were finished…I liked the idea of keeping all the stocking stitches together and as the stockings were the highest priority it was the more practical decision to make, the image on the left is the completed stocking section.
 And now that the stockings are finished it is time to catch up the events that I missed…First up is the now old news from October which is all Birthdays and that doesn’t include my sister and 2 brothers who also have October Birthdays.
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For the last 2 years I have resolved to blog regularly ALL Year and have successfully kept that resolution…I thought about making the same resolution for this year but really I think that my blogging has become enough of a good habit that I don’t need the resolution to continue regular blogging…So what to resolve to do, I have had lots of thoughts of grand things that I would love to achieve but I think that a resolution has to be doable, if it has any chance of being kept, so I thought a bit more about the more modest things that I would like to achieve, amongst them is a project that is well started but untouched for more than a year, I do think that it is time it was finished and I hereby resolve to FINISH my Crazy Quilted Box Top before the end of 2009.
My Garden has provided me a lovely new years day treat with this, the first of my Lilies to blossom.
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I hope that everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and I wish one and all a Happy New Year.
To end the year I leave you with an image of a beetle that I photographed in the garden a couple of weeks back, the size (about an inch long) and shape as a Christmas beetle but even more vibrantly coloured than any I have seen before, he really is One of Natures Jewels.
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Above are the finished Twin Stockings you can see larger images on my website Here and Here and below they hang above the fire place with the rest of the family’s stockings.
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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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