I've posted this little bag before but I finally figured out a closure for it and now it's done, done, done! I had planned to add a handle, perhaps bamboo. While the flower is pretty well centered, it seemed to me that the bag needed to be taller to be balanced. But I didn't like it when I experimented with handles in the store.I took it to the Homewood Guild and the suggestions I got there were all for soft handles--cords and drawstrings. But I felt they would take too much off the top, so it sat another month until I was cleaning this weekend, putting away some beading supplies. What I ended up doing was sewing large gold-colored jump rings all around the top edge and stringing the cord through them. A soft closure but in better visual balance, I think.
I'm working on a project that's a gift so I can't show it here. I'm also getting back to some ufos. I began the washcloth above after the other two I did for holiday gifts. This one, though... I ripped that third section out at least four times. The washcloths are a series of eight short-row sections and I put a life-line at the end of each section--and I'm glad I did. I ended up ripping back to the lifeline twice! I finally just put the thing away. This time when I picked it up I was back on track and completed two sections this weekend.
This little tree is another random project. A few years back I made a bunch of stuffed shapes from printed and tone-on-tone fabrics. Trees and pumpkins. Some I beaded and most of those are done and gone--I have a paisley tree with a bit of beading on it but I'm not sure it's done yet. I found the beading tedious so I stopped.This year I found the stuffies and I picked this one up and just began stitching it with random chain-stitch tendrils in the two colors. It's also tedious and surprisingly time consuming but I like it so I keep going. I'm finding this color combination pleasing.
