Finally - an ornament finish and some progress photos

I finally finished an ornament for this year! I'm way behind doing getting one done per month but at least I've got one now. This is a very old freebie I always had planned on stitching called "Santa in the Window". It's not available online.

I've been making some good progress on other projects. Here is Beatrix Potter and Peppermint Twist progress as of today. I do wish I could get the color right in my photos but you'll just have to trust me the color looks better in person. Also, I took these pictures in the evening and that always makes it harder to get the color correct.

Hope all of you readers are doing alright. I've gotten to the point where I don't even want to listen to the news anymore - too many depressing things! Sometimes it's better to avoid it and just keep on doing the best you can. Luckily we did our taxes and are getting a refund so that's some good news for a change. We've had several restaurants and small businesses close down in our area. It's sad. In the meantime I'll keep trying to spend at my LNS because we need it to stay in business! I haven't picked up much new from market except a couple of the new Prairie Schoolers. I think I have more Prairie Schooler than any other designer - I counted them and I have 54! Don't ask me how many I've actually stitched - but you know if you don't get them when they come out then you have to pay even more to get them on eBay or something.

I had a question from a reader about how I end the trim around my flatfolds. I usually make my own cording - I start putting the trim on using the end where the cording was folded in half when I made it so that at least one end of my cording doesn't have raw thread ends. I glue the cording all around to within a few inches of where it meets the starting point. I mark where it needs to be cut with a pin and I put some Aleene's tacky glue around the cording where I think I'm going to cut it. I let it dry, then cut it the cording where I need to - the dried glue helps it keep from unraveling as soon as you cut it. Then I glue a little more on the end and twist it good with my fingers and glue the end in place so that it meets the starting point. Hope that's clear - just takes a little practice and sometimes it comes out better than other times. If you have trouble getting it to look nice, start applying your braid or cording in a corner of the piece and leave plenty of extra before you start glueing it down. Then when you get back around just tie the ends in a bow at that corner. You can then knot the ends and snip them. That's how I did this little pinkeep edge.