Good Tidings of Great Joy

One of my friends married a preacher seven years ago, on New Year's Day. They had been married mayeb two years when I saw this kit for a snowman nativity banner and thought it perfect for her as she loves snowmen and is a minister's wife. Well, I ordered the kit, stitched maybe three rows . . . and promptly forgot about it. Oops.

The past two years I have been determined to use up materials and finish any half-started or neglected projects lying around. At the beginning of 2005 I went through some of these materials and made a list of which ones I wanted to finish that year -- and it actually worked! I think I marked off everything on the list save one. Not bad. Last year, this banner went at the top of the project list, followed by the "Frosty Greetings" snowmen picture for Sherrie and "Each New Wave" (posted earlier this week) for Manda. Not only did I scratch all three off my list, but several other projects as well.

As you may imagine, I've already drawn up a list for 2007 and am taking advantage of the cold weather to get a head start on ticking items off of that list. So far so good!

To keep up my motivation to finish the banner before New Year's Eve, when my friends and I all get together to celebrate Christmas and the New Year, I took pics of each week's progress. And yes, I did have a picture from week two, but unfortunately the battery in mt camera was low apparently weak and that and a few other pics were lost. I also had to have a remedial sewing lesson in order to complete this project.

My sister gave me her old sewing machine a couple years ago when she got a new one, and though I had been meaning to get it out and mess around with it long before now...that never happen. So, though I finished the cross-stitching more than a week before Christmas, it wasn't "officially" finished until noon on New Year's Eve. My sister was supposed to come up a few days before but was sick. Which did cause me to panic a bit. Thankfully, she managed to come up for a few hours NYE and walked me through how to wind the bobbin and thread the needle. And...as long as I had the machine out I also completed a couple ornaments from years ago.

And now...here is the finished project, and the weeks leading up to it.

week one

week three

week four

Ta-da! All done!

The banner is backed with white felt, and green felt was used for the hangers. The tassel was made of leftover strands of red embroidery floss, and was a pain in the butt to attach. Not bad, considering I hadn't used a sewing machine in almost 20 years, eh?