2015 Wrap-UP

I bought this album when it came out on the occasion of Frank's 50th year. This year is the 100th year since his birth. I no longer have the original. It is on my iTunes.

To paraphrase the lyrics of my favorite Frank Sinatra song:

Its been a very good year
for small town* girls
of independent means.

*I've switched the small town and the blue-blooded girls

Last night I discovered I have been featured in a travel blog for my jewelry rolls. I am so flattered as the blog is quite beautiful.
                                                  Page by Paige-Female Travel Blog


My Etsy shop has done very well and I could have done even more if I had planned ahead and partially made up jewelry roll components during the slow times. But, not being a fortune teller, I sewed on new stuff instead.  I was getting so many orders that I had to curtail them early in the month or spend all day AND night sewing.

Actually I could have completed more items but then we have to depend on the speed of the United States Postal Service to get them delivered. The USPS does an excellent job but, like all the delivery services, December is CRAZY!

All of my packages traveled to their destinations with relative ease EXCEPT one that took a little side trip to Tampa, Florida!!  It saw snow in Chicago and split.  It eventually came back but the 2 day priority became 5 days...but altogether not bad.

Today was Christmas Cards Day.  Well, it was Finish the Christmas Cards Day. It took me a few.
I am so into this new embroidery machine that I decided to sew my cards. There was a stash of red and green card stock in a drawer complete with envelopes that I had forgotten about.  All I had to buy was some white linen which I overbought by about 2 yards so there may be more white linen projects.

Cutting the linen to size and creating a bit of fringe on the edges created quite a mess of pulled threads and fuzz when I trimmed with the rotary cutter.  This photo shows only the teensiest portion of the fuzzy waste.

You can see that we are probably having a green Christmas this year!

Here is the machine stitching out the design. Its a simple wreath with minimal satin stitch and 24 of these ate up lot of thread.

The design used only three colors.  You can see my great new spool box on the right of the machine. It holds 80, I said EIGHTY! spools and has chambers at the top that you put them in with holes for the treads to feed into the machine. Really keeps them organized and easy to set up and use.

You can see the design I am sewing on the screen on the machine.

 

.

Sulky KK 2000 Temporary Spray Adhesive secures it to the card stock before more stitching is added to hold it permanently

                                                          

Here I have switched over to my non-embroidery Janome to stitch the linen on to the card stock.  I chose a squiggly sort of stitch that looks kind of floral-like because it hides the fact that I didn't always get it exactly even.

I did green thread on the green card stock.

I could work on this machine while more embroidered wreaths were being churned out on the Memory Craft 9900. I only had to jump up to change threads and hoop the next one.

The greeting inside was printed out on some heavy paper and also sewn onto the card with the same squiggly stitch.  I momentarily considered stitching out our names, but that was going a bit TOO far. As it was, I had to go 3 miles to pick up a metallic Sharpie to show up on this dark green. A touch of elegance, I think!

For my blog readers and friends, my wish for you is to have your 2016 be as happy as 2015  was for me and
                         Merry Christmas