The finally finished finish

I was driving home on Friday night, after working at the theatre, trying to chart my course of action to get these ornaments finished, when I realized I had the perfect project to begin with. I'm so dumb about these things.

Last summer, I stitched Julia Lucas' Christmas door ornament for the Brides' Tree SAL. It was also going to be a fair entry before I realized my finishing skills and the stock available at G Street Fabrics were not equal to the vision I had in my head. I had planned to do peaks and such, and that didn't work out. I did find cute fabric at G Street, or at least I thought it was cute. My mom didn't feel that wild animals were very Christmassy, or homey, and didn't buy my logic that the home at the holidays is the refuge from the wild animals of the world, and that, on top of the fact that I paid an outrageous price for the glass wreath charm and I couldn't make the ornament look right, caused me to lose interest. Of course I did this after I had sewn it together, but before I put a ribbon on. What can I say? Sometimes I abandon a UFO within a few stitches, sometimes a few weeks, sometimes at the point of being almost finished. It's part of my charm. Or dysfunction.

So, I decided to finish it. I had pretty much all I needed: the finished piece, ribbon, glue, scissors, beads, even pushpins! So, when I got home, after I remembered to feed the dogs(sorry you had to remind me, Shocka, I was on a mission!), I pulled out my glue, ribbon, and pushpins, and commenced a'gluin'. And then realized the red pebble beads that I found in the bottom of my detritus popcorn tin wouldn't fit. I just added beads to my list of needed errands, went to Michaels this weekend, and FINISHED MY ORNAMENT!





It's not perfect. I've learned some more about finishing since I did this, and know not to sew so tight, and add batting to make it smooth and worthy, but it's not bad. It's Christmas tree-worthy. It doesn't look like a two year old glued it together--another little thing I learned is that I lack mad hot glue gun skills, but I'm OK with that. I prefer my Aleene's tacky glue. And that 527 cement. I've yet to lose an acrylic nail to good old Tacky glue, but I did get a fresh fill ruined by accidently touching the metal part of a cheap glue gun (before you think about how odd that is, I also lost a section of another nail with some sort of acetone-based fabric glue. Nail tech not happy about that. I was more not happy. What monster comes up with these products?





And the back fabric. It's not Christmasy. But it has a deeper meaning. You feel me right? Besides, I saw a fox the other week coming home from work. There might could be a tiger hiding in the woods too. This is Maryland, after all . . .