I'm 2/3rds of the way through Christmas Crafting Calamity only because I decided to drop two of the projects. The lights getting embroidered on the navy sweater for mom is gonna wait another year- I'm hoping I can get myself to finally finish it early in the year, maybe as a Mother's Day thing? I think if I give my brain a deadline like that with nothing else but the card to do then it'll be possible to get it done. The towels for my friend are also going to wait, but I already had a feeling they would.
I finished the fox embroidery! It came out pretty cute too. I saw a thing on Pinterest about, when framing embroidery, finish it off around the glass so that the back of the frame is nice and tidy and that worked out really well! I've done it once before but not for a gift, so it's always a relief. I'll post a picture of the embroidery soon.
I'm still working on the table runner- I was going to try and do it entirely by hand but I've decided to finish up the last of it by machine after all. As long as the machine behaves it'll go a lot faster. That's if it behaves, though. It's my mom's machine, older than I am, and I'm convinced it can smell fear. Mom and I are gonna do some last minute running around tomorrow and I'm gonna take all my stuff over to her house and work on it while she and dad are at an appointment and also a Christmas party.
Once I finish that... it's onto cards! The ones that need to be mailed will not be mailed in time... or at least they'll be right on the line. But I'm doing it. I used to be one of those people who was really on top of Christmas cards before the depression hit and I'm hoping with enough poking myself with a stick I can get there again.
I've officially started the first of my Christmas things! I might try to do two at once- do the whole "have one project ready for when the other one frustrates me" thing. Both the ones I'm thinking of are for my mom. I've got a sweater for her that I'm gonna embroider on- it's just a plain navy blue with a cowl neckline and I'm gonna embroider a string of lights like a necklace. I'd like to get that done for her before Christmas, which is why I'm thinking of trying to double up. I'm also doing a quilted table runner for her, which is what I've started today. It's my first time quilting anything! I know I need to stop trying things for the first time when I'm wanting to do it for a gift but making gifts for people is the main thing that motivates me when it comes to a lot of little things.
The table runner is not gonna be bad, though. I'm in the process of cutting strips out of my fabric, I'm gonna sew all the strips together and then cut that into squares. Then some of the squares stay squares (center of the runner) and then others get cut into trianges and get used for the edges. It's gonna be fairly short cause the runner is for an antique tea cart, and so with any leftover squares/triangles I'll cut those into something smaller and make coasters. I still need to buy the backing fabric though.
For other Christmas things, I'm gonna do a cute little embroidery for one of my best friends and I also am gonna try to get some good towels for her and embroider something on those. The towels might get saved for her birthday, though, if I run out of time.
I finished embroidering the cushion covers for my rollator finally. It took longer than I thought it would but there were some periods of time where I didn't do anything so I'm also not super surprised. I also did a portrait embroidery of one of my aunt's dogs for her birthday. Maybe I'm still too close to it but I'm just not thrilled with it. She liked it, which is good, and everyone else I've shown it to says it's good... but I just got so stressed trying to finish it on time and even though, objectively, I know it's not *bad* it's still so different from the version I had in my head that I'm just not fond of it. I'm debating if I'm gonna put it up on here... I probably will, I guess. Not soon, though.
I really need to get going on my Halloween projects. I know what I definitely want to get done this year and what I'd like to get done... part of the problem is that I want to film it for YouTube so I can get that going again, but *filming* anything, even just on my phone, takes so much more prep, both as far as actually having a filming area and also mentally cause there's more things to juggle. I keep telling myself to just pick one and get out the supplies but my brain won't cooperate. Maybe now that my aunt's birthday has past I can get it in gear.
Testing to see how this looks! I have a couple projects going on: I'm embroidering the cushion covers for my rollator cushions, I'm working on decorating a t-shirt, and drawing the Haunted Mansion wallpaper on a picture frame which will get painted at some point. But also I need to start a bunch of projects! My aunt's birthday is coming up and I want to embroider one of her dogs, and also I was hoping to get a couple of Halloween crafts filmed for Youtube. Unfortunately for me, all of the ones I haven't started yet are the ones that have real deadlines.