12 Days of Christmas update

Hi Everyone,
It has been slow but steady progress the last two weeks.
Have completed the stitching on the first of my bells.

Stitching with a soft gold metallic thread has really brought my bells to life.
I had been putting off making my last four baubles as two of them kept posing me a problem as to what fabric to use. Nine Ladies Dancing and Ten Lords-A-Leaping.
Blue against my red bauble background was the obvious choice but I am using so much blue!!!
Finally my lady dancing is made.

A tiny scrap of sea green plus mauves gave me her dress

But for my lord -a leaping

I just had to go back to blues, his jacket is a very dark iridescent navy.

This was the fiddliest bauble of them all.

The last two I thought would be much easier, the piper only being two pieces

The biggest headache was what thread to stitch it with, It was only one shape with a black oval.

I didn't want a hard black outline but felt my gold mettalic might just be lost.

Searching my threads I found a black/gold metallic and it has worked, didn't on the black oval though so had to unpick and restitch with black thread.

Finally Twelve Drummer's Drumming.

Not Blue which would have been so easy !!! Mauve plus the fabrics from my dove has given me my drum.

I still have to do some finishing on all my baubles to round their edges a little more, that is going to be quiet but peaceful mornings work.

My 12 Days of Christmas Baubles are now complete.

So today I am starting my second Christmas Bell.

I have six days back at work from tomorrow and next Saturday 28th March I am attending a specialty threads and stitching workshop with Country Dawn so my sewing time will be limited.

Have bought a spare bobbin case and a cording foot in anticipation of a day that may well stretch my current  boundaries, am so looking forward to it. 

Cheers's everyone, I think I am still in time to link to Esther's WOW.

Jenny

12 Days of Christmas, Progress

Hi Everyone,
Has been a couple of weeks since I blogged. So much has been happening at work recently and my days off are now Fri and Sat so I always seem to run out of time to blog for Esther's WOW.
Today is Monday, I had been summoned for jury service but released at 10.30 am due to legal hiccups and have to report back tomorrow. Checked in with work and everything is fully covered so am taking lieu time for rest of day so will be ready early to link this week.
So how is my 12 DOC progressing.

I am loving how it is coming together. My border fabric has worked so well tying my fabrics together. The little green border brings out the tree and the words at the bottom, well they tell the whole story

"The stockings were hung on the chimney with care"

I decided to let the stockings extend to the bottom edge to accentuate the bottom border, also that border is  narrower than the sides and top to fit my finished size.

My tree is double padded. I decided to trim away the backing fabric and cut an extra layer of batting for the tree shape. My iron on batting is already in place, the wrinkles are from it releasing from my background as I manouver the fabric to stitch my applique. This will press out before I add my backing fabric.

The top corner's of my border. I was making my life so difficult, wanting to add charm squares and extend the small green border around them. I still might but when a friend said "just mitre them at present and move on to the next stage" I did, they are better than I thought they would be and I had spent 2 days worrying about them.

My parcels, well the only two fabrics I found that were right sizewise were the green and the red with stars.

The parcels without bows yet, their ribbons are commercial ribbon and I plan to make 3D embellishments for these ones, so not until it is completed..

My Peace Dove, I just love her and think she is almost the most beautiful part of Esther's pattern. The heavily overlaid gold fabric had only just arrived into store the day I went shopping and was sitting on the counter waiting to be checked off. I just had to have it!!! the body fabric has silver embossing.

My star, I wanted to move away from blue but nothing else seemed to work. I chose a blue backgound and now have to let it dictate to me.  I followed Esther's instructions for the star, I thought to a T.
My center was not the greatestalthough esther's method worked very well, hence the little gold circle to cover a multitude of my sin's, LOL
I know I want to hang my baubles on the tree but that  meant I had a big expanse of open space to each side of the tree in the top third of the hanging. I loved Glenda's addition of candles to her version of the quilt but they were not the right option to position in the top third.
I went back to pattern's I have collected over the years and found this one of Christmas Bells from
"Just Patchwork" which seems perfect.

I adjusted my pattern size to fit my hanging and am really happy, have a mirror image to make for the left side of my hanging. DH has not put up my design wall yet so I am using a piece of polyproplyne resting on my ironing board, hence some funny fabric angles in my photos.

Again, I did not want a blue bow but nothing else worked!!! I now have some back sewing to do as my ribbon moved while I was stitching it and it is not straight over the top 2 inches and it annoys me - a lot!!!
Bells to finish and then 4 more baubles to make.

I Love to hear from you and try to reply to all comments.
Cheers Jenny