Red, Red Rose Update #2

Happy Thursday!

I've had a busy and productive week! Happy to report that I've finished the bell pull, and have started work on the next project.

Progress on Red Rose Bell Pull

It was such a joy to see this pattern come to life. This is such a beautiful poem, and choosing the motifs was really fun.

Huzzah! Now shall we go for a fully finished object? Yes we shall!

First off, I squared the edges of my Aida, using my Mother's incredibly sharp cutter. This was fun, and my fingers only came close to being cut a few times :)

Burrowed around in some drawers and found this lovely piece of red felt, then cut the red felt to the same size as my Aida.

Does this Perle cotton look familiar? If you thought,"Didn't she use that Perle Cotton in the chart as well?" You'd be correct! I liked it so much, I decided to use it in the next step.

Once, very many Christmases ago, my Mother and I sat down and made the most adorable felt mice. That was my introduction to the blanket stitch.

When I was thinking about ways to finish this bell pull, fabric, Aleene's Glue, and various other methods occurred to me. In the end though, I decided to use felt and a blanket stitch.

Behold the blanket stitch! So fun, yet so simple. I'll admit, it's been a while since I used it, so I needed a bit of a refresher course on YouTube. Very useful, straightforward video. The link is here

So I busily blanket stitched away. I found the Perle Cotton very easy to use, and an added bonus was that it didn't look all twisted like the six stranded floss can come out looking sometimes.

Enter the felt backed bell pull:

So far so good!

The thing about blanket stitch is that you have to keep the stitches neat and pay attention to the spacing between the stitches. Usually this can be a bit tricky, but this time I had the wonderful Aida fabric helping me out. Just needed to count the holes and add the blanket stitches.

After that, all I needed to do was add the Perle cotton to the back for the hanger.

Voila!

And just like that, a fully finished object! This will hang next to my desk for a while, I think.

This chart is available in my shop, with written instructions included.

The link to my shop is here

Happy Stitching!

Marisol

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