Finishing a Project

I'm coming to the end of my Chatelaine project, and I've been interested in watching my own responses to it. I talked about the feeling of loss; I got over that on Friday and spent the afternoon listening to a book and finishing the stitching. Since then I've found a couple of stitches that were forgotten/skipped, but I think I did pretty good.

Then I had to start the beading. Instead of starting right in on that on Friday, I procrastinated by "cleaning out" the basket next to my stitching chair. The reason I gave myself was that I was looking for my next project (and I was successful, stay tuned) but it was really procrastination. (I also knew the beads were in that basket, but it took a while to find them.) I found complete supplies for 3 beading projects that I purchased last year at the bead show, but I'm not in the mood to do any beading. I found a major finished project that I haven't blogged about (that I went through the same process with) and I will talk about that later this week. And I found the pattern for my next project (!): Quaker Turtles! You can see a picture of them here: With My Needle

I finally gave up on the procrastination and started beading. Here is the set-up I am working with.



I had to find the thread, the needle, the beads, and the tacky BOB all at the same time; I'm so disorganized that I would find one element, and then misplace it before I found all the rest. I was able to start beading by late Friday night, but I only got one thread done, and I was quite discouraged about how long the beading was going to take. However, by Saturday evening I had found a way to pin tacky BOB to my fabric and have 2 hands free for beading. That makes it a lot easier so my beading needle does not get caught on previous stitches.

So after this weekend I'm almost 1/4 way done with the beading! I am amazing myself, I thought it would take much longer. The beads are adding color and sparkle. I love the color; I'm worried that the sparkle is too much. I know some people who stitch Chatelaine projects use thread instead of the beads, and I can see why. But it is fun! But there is no way a picture will capture changes the beads make; you will have to take my word for it.

I am entering this give-away; I love stitching alphabet books. If I link to the give-away in my blog, I get 5 entries, so here it is! Violarium give-away I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be entering this one.