finally, some stitching...

I haven't done much this last week, really. I did complete one boxed goody from the quilt show. I love the carrying box. But inside...

is the feast! This cake was really fun to make. The kit was very complete and the instructions in English, which helped (although the Japanese instruction sheet was very clear and I probably could have worked from the photos alone). It's made with an interesting combination of felt and cardboard, stitching and gluing (white glue). The cake is finished inside, too, which I thought was a nice touch.

The kit came with the felt and cardboard all precut to size and shape, wonderful for someone lazy like me. It even had batting. The only quibble I had was that I didn't like the quality of the embroidery floss, it seemed thin and rough, almost like linen thread. But it stitched fine and didn't tangle. There are more photos on my Flickr site.

Other projects this weekend included this felt bead necklace. I loosely followed instructions from the most recent (and last, sadly) issue of Fiber&Stitch. I had felt and novelty yarn handy and sat and whipped out the beads quickly. The necklace is strung on cotton yarn (from my Cooper's Flock birds) and that is probably temporary. On my weekend outing I got flatish crystal beads to add to the necklace. I wore it yesterday and it's like wearing nothing it's so light!

Last, a friend and I are hoping to start an ongoing project for our EGA chapter to teach children (and, hopefully, their mothers) embroidery at the local YMCA. I thought bookmarks would be a good beginning project and so I made up a couple of models to show at last night's chapter meeting. We also sent around a sign up sheet. I hope people were interested.

I did some "marketing research" with a preteen girl at the Y and she was interested. She's currently reading the Twilight series of books so I used motifs from the covers (apple and tulip) and the colors (red, black and white) for the felt bookmarks. The "I like you" balloons are from a learn to cross stitch handout I found online (and then lost--I have to hunt it up again).