The Candle Saga

Brace yourselves, as this is a bit of a saga....

In past years, I've made sets of Dropcloth @dropcloth ornaments that I really liked - the hearts and the snowflakes. But I've also stitched some that were stitched but never got made into ornaments - the gingerbread houses, as they admittedly are a little fiddly, at least for me. So this year, since I did like the candles, I wanted to stitch them, but I also decided right off to keep them together. Maybe I'd frame them? I wasn't sure.

Fast forward..... 

And I had a product I was definitely not happy with. Oh the embroidery was just fine, nice even. But for some reason, I'd gotten some serious puckering and I'm not really sure why. I blamed it on a faulty hoop, which I've since disposed of. Whatever, I wasn't going to keep the candles together after all.

After trying to minimize that puckering with first, hand-quilting, which I then removed; and then machine-quilting, which I also took out.... I decided they were destined to be ornaments after all. Except I struggled with that too. I cut them apart, sewed each candle onto backing, but couldn't turn them right-side out! I think they were just too think, with my extremely dense quilting. So.... I removed them all from their backings! I pressed them, and tried to glue the seam allowances to the candle backs, thinking I'd hand applique them all to a background fabric. I only got half-way through the first candle when I decided that wasn't very enjoyable at all with the thickness of the candles. 

SO I switched over to machine-applique with monofilament thread on top, and a 50wt dark blue in the bobbin. Worked like a charm!

Just add a little side fabric, a lapped backing, and before I knew it I had a holiday pillow! 

The background was made from Essex Speckle Yarn Dyed in Ocean, and the backing in Kona Windsor. Finally, I have a finish I'm really happy with. Whew!

P.S. The candles were stitched with perle #8 from Wonderfil, with accents using Cosmo metallic threads.