Progress on the thread beds and another NOEL

Sometimes you just have to clean house. I spent about an hour and a half cleaning up the bedroom. Wash sheets, vacuumed, dusted, and picked up all the dirty Kleenex that were overflowing the trash receptacle. I went thru a lot of tissues with the cold! I am feeling much better today! Yeah! I did get the self-biding pressed on the three thread beds. I will finish those up tonight.

At lunch yesterday I worked on the NOEL cross stitching. I got another letter and a half stitched. I am getting faster at stitching these. After this one, I would like to get three more stitched. Next year, I have to plan better!

Project bags, thread beds, another NOEL

My cold is much better and the optometrist was able to order a new bridge nose piece for my glasses which will be in Tuesday or Wednesday. I still was feeling lousy over the weekend, but managed to get a few things done. First, Friday - we had the company Christmas lunch. There were lots of people there; this company has been growing. I did not participate in the ugly sweater competition.

I did buy some raffle tickets. The money goes to a charity every year and this year's was the Ronald McDonald House. There is one of those located here. I was surprised that my name was called and I won a Ninja blender. This will be going to my son since I have a VitaMix and his blender is old.

When I got home, I started working on the pillowcase. I had just enough fabric left over that I made a boxy pouch to go with it.

Saturday morning I headed to the post office to mail the pillowcase and pouch. I decided to go to the Verizon store to get some help with my phone. I had an iPhone 8 SE and it would not accept updates and only had 5GB of storage. Well, you know what happened. I ended up with a new phone - a 17. That is quite a jump from 8 to 17! Still have to work out the kinks so it works like I need it to. For kicks, I took all my old phones for them to see. My first phone is older than the young lady that took care of me!

It snowed Saturday and by Sunday morning there was enough that I needed to shovel. Before I got outside to shovel the neighbor came over and had started shoveling my driveway! I helped him finish.

I had to run an errand and then stayed inside to work on project bags. I got four done.

Then I started working on the matching thread beds. There are a lot of steps to make these and I was running out of steam. I wanted to get one made as a review since it has been a while since I made these.  Three are almost done and the other one just needs a little piece of velcro on it to hold it shut.

I watched the Browns get beaten badly by the Bears, did some laundry, and on Saturday I did get one more NOEL stitched.

Another NOEL done, retriever fabric, and broken glasses

I spent last evening finishing the stitching on the red NOEL. I was feeling kind of crappy so I just sat in front of the space heater, watched TV and stitched.

My brother asked me to make a pillowcase for someone and he wanted golden retrievers on it. He found this fabric and had it mailed to me. I will get that made tonight so I can get it mailed to him.

One of the nosepieces on my glasses broke off this morning. Yesterday the glasses were sitting kind of weird on my nose but I never thought to look at them.  I have had these frames for a very long time. I hope they are still available. I can still wear them; they just sit a little crooked on my nose. LOL!!

Have a great weekend! I am feeling better so I have plans to get a lot done. Besides the pillowcase I need to get some project bags sewn together and stitch a couple more NOEL so I can get cards in the mail.

Project bags, thread beds, and another NOEL

I took as sick day yesterday. I hurt all over when I woke up and decided to burn one of my 17 sick days I had left for 2025. I gathered myself together, took some Excedrin and other OTC symptom relievers, and headed to the studio. I turned on the space heater, sat there for a while, and thought about what I could do. I decided to cut out project bags and thread beds. I need to get these done so I can get them mailed. I cut four project bags and two thread beads out of the Georgia fabric for my sister's friend. I had to think about how I cut these out since the fabric is a one way design.

Then I cut out four project bags and four thread beds out of this dragonfly fabric.

I would iron and cut a little then sit a bit. This picture shows the pieces needed for a project bag. The outside fabric, the inner fabric that is interfaced, a piece of vinyl, and two pieces for the zipper - one is folded in half and the other is pressed with each half folded to the center. The thread beds have one additional piece of fabric for lining the pocket. There is a lot of prep work that goes into these! The prep takes so much longer than sewing the bag together!

I also got half of another NOEL stitched.

I am feeling better today on day 7 of this cold. As long as I take the Coricidin pills, then I don't cough which for me is the worst part. Yesterday it was freezing rain and wind. The city was out spreading salt and the main and secondary roads were in good shape. We only got about a half inch of snow after the rain turned to snow.

The first NOEL and plants

I got the first Noel stitched last night. The letters are just the right size. Here is what it will look like in the frame card.

Wanda asked me about my other plants so I went around and took photos of them. I have three Norfolk Island Pines. I just bought these at the grocery store at Xmas time. I have had them for a number of years. This one is 20" tall

This one is about 10 inches tall. It has never grown very well.

and this one is two feet tall.

Here is the rubber tree that was a start off of the one at the office. It is about 3 feet tall.

I have several snake plants which I love. I remember my grandmother having big pots of snake plants.

I don't know the name of this succulent, but it is pretty cool.

These are all starts. They don't grow very fast and they have been in this container for a several years.

This jade plant is about 10" tall

an aloe vera plant that someone gave me a start

Here's my crazy plant that needs some TLC. Yes, it is growing across the floor!

Another succulent that I grew from a piece.

and then I was given a tiny little plant that I had to repot and now it looks like this. It sits in the bathroom window with that succulent. They both seem happy there

I don't have a lot of good windows to have plants and I would probably have more plants if I did. I recently picked up a piece of a Christmas cactus that been broken off. I am going to try and propagate it.

A little stitching and blooming African Violets

I felt lousy when I got home from work; Monday was day 4 of the cold. I just need to feel better by Friday! LOL!! I just wasn't up to cutting fabric, interfacing and vinyl for project bags last night. I decided I would do a little stitching. This will say NOEL and I will insert it into a frame card. I should have started these about a month ago!

I had bought this book full of cross stitch alphabets.

See the number at the top of the page? That is the stitch count for the height of the letters. This book has alphabets from 1 to 60 stitches. Here is the one I am using.

To make things easy for me, I copied the page, cut out the letters, taped them together, and enlarged them. So here is my chart. Once I get the first NOEL stitched, I will decide if I need to add a border.  I am simplifying the letters just a bit by not stitching some of curly bits. 

Both of my African violets are in bloom.

Another tote done and the second Advent box

I worked on the Georgia Bulldog tote most of the day on Sunday. I am happy the way it turned out. It is for a friend of my sister. It seems like it takes so long to make one of these! I take the time to top stitch two rows on the pocket panel seams and zippers so that is a lot of topstitching! I have plenty of fabric left for what comes next which are project bags. I will probably make a couple thread beds too. I also have some Alanta Braves fabric to make my sister some project bags and thread beds. Things are going to be humming in the studio this week!

This year I placed two orders with the Fat Quarter shop and I am calling it my self-curated Advent box. The second order came and here is what was in it. I needed a new point turner. I broke the end off of mine. To get free shipping I needed to add something small, so I bought a couple more of the door buster spools of thread.

I bought these three cross stitch charts

and I bought a gallon of Mary Ellen's Best Press. You can dilute this by half and it still works just as good. I kept my old Best Press jug just for that. It was on sale for 20% off, I got free shipping and with diluting it the price is affordable. This will last me several years.  I like it so much better than the spray stuff in the aerosol can.

My cold hasn't gotten any worse. The symptoms are manageable with the OTC drugs. Thanks for all your well wishes!