I’m trying to clear the decks a bit at the moment, I’ve quite a few half finished projects, several from mini workshops that I’ve attended and then not finished. One such item was this pretty Christmas decoration.

It was from a member run workshop at Skipton Stitchers, Sue had made several of these decorated wooden cotton reels for various occasions such as wedding anniversaries, birthdays etc, they were very pretty, so we asked her to teach us. Our mission was to do a Christmas version.

We measured out the length required for the embroidered bit, tacked round it so we would keep within the parameters, it has calico behind to give the embroidery a bit more support. We could embroider or decorate it however we wanted. I decided on Merry Christmas and a winter scene.

I used a pretty batik for my background and embroidered the Merry Christmas in chain stitch. I like chain stitch for writing as it does take the curves really well. I think I was about 2/3rds of the way along the writing by the end of the session, then it sat in my workbox for several months, looking reproachfully at me!

A couple of weeks ago I pulled it out and started to stitch it again. I outlined the mountains in split stitch, regulars to my blog may have spotted the outline of Catbells – I couldn’t resist sneaking that in! I embroidered the trees next and the church. It still needed a bit of filling so I stitched two rows of seed stitch to look like footprints in the snow, I then added feather stitch to the mountains. I decided a bit of sparkle was needed so I found some tiny sequins and sparkly beads in my stash and added those too. Here was my finished strip…

We were given a strip of stiffener to iron on the back, unfortunately I didn’t think to check the width first and mine was about 1/4″ too wide for my cotton reel. As the stiffener was attached to the calico, not the main fabric, I decided to fold the top fabric out of the way whilst I trimmed the calico back with a rotary cutter. Unfortunately I didn’t fold it out of the way far enough and sliced through the front, you can just see it on the photo above.

Panic! I had several thoughts on how to rectify the situation, but in the end I just trimmed it all right along the top edge and then did a small blanket-stitch to secure the side. Although the bottom edge was just folded in I blanket-stitched along there too to make it even. Here was my finished strip…

All I had to do was stitch it on to the reel and decorate the top. The reel had a strip of double-sided sticky tape which did help to hold it secure whilst I stitched it. I decided to use organza ribbon and a button to tie it round the reel, the organza ribbon didn’t detract from the embroidery as much as satin ribbon did.

We had been given a Christmas tree for the top. I stood it on a small wooden button just to raise it a bit. I found a mini cotton reel which I wound with Christmas coloured DMC thread, I used a glue gun to attach everything. The tiny sewing machine is a charm, there’s some little scissors and then several buttons…it’s surprising what you can fit on top of a cotton reel!

So it’s finished, I love it, it wouldn’t win any prizes but it’s cute and I like it.

Talking of prizes, you may remember the quilted place mat I made from a couple of orphan blocks for a WI competition, it was part of the group competitions held at the Great Yorkshire Show. To my surprise I received a message yesterday to say it received top marks, 20 out of 20!