I fully finished something!

It doesn't happen often but I actually made myself sit down and finish a piece (actually three!) this past weekend. I finished the stitching on Hands on Design Gather Wildflowers Friday evening and was determined to not just stick them in a drawer for some "future" finishing (especially since the next set in the series will be shipping in April), so Saturday I got everything ready and went to work. The really nice thing about this was that everything you need to do the finishing was included in the kit (except for double-sided tape, a rotary cutter and cutting mat, none of which was absolutely necessary but which I actually already had), and Cathy's detailed instructions were very easy to follow. Here are the stitched finishes Friday:

And the fully finished pieces Saturday afternoon:

Of course, I can always see things I could have done better but overall I am really happy with how these came out. There are magnets on the back of the pieces that stick to the metal rounds, so you can change them out easily with the other seasons that will be released this year. Bring on the summer set!

As an inducement to finish these I told myself that once they were done I could start the newest Mirabilia design that came in the mail on Saturday called Camille in Bloom. Here is a photo of the chart alongside Nora's original art:

The black background within the frame is all stitched; I'm not a big fan of how black floss looks on light fabric since the fabric shows through too much, so I started going through my stash looking for a fabric that might work with the design. I thought about using plain black but it seemed like it would be too stark with the light-colored frame around the portrait, so I looked for a dark fabric with a bit more movement to it. I came across a piece of Belfast from Sweet Stash Fabrics called Medusa's Gaze, which wouldn't quite work with this design but it made me think of Lavender & Lace's Firefly Fairies, which I've had sitting around for 20+ years:

When I bought the chart there weren't hand dyed fabrics available; there are instructions included that tell you how to bleach your fabric to get that starburst effect, but of course that was always too scary to contemplate! Over the years I picked up a couple of pieces of fabric made especially for this design, HLCFabrics' Blue Clouds and Crafty Kitten's Starburst Blues, but I just wasn't in love with how "forced" the starburst effect looked on either of them:

Medusa's Gaze had a much more natural looking glow to it, and suddenly I just had to start this design! I could swear that I had pulled the flosses for this years ago, but after a fruitless search for them I decided to gather them again. I spent some time figuring out where on the fabric to start, and by Saturday evening I was ready to go:

The color of the photo isn't quite true, as it's bluer than it appears here. By last night I had a fairly good start; I had about half of the beads in the cap done, and I finished that area this morning:

This photo is a better representation of the fabric, and I am just so happy with how it's looking already! The chart photo does not do this design justice--there are so many pretty details and bling that don't show up in the picture. The entire top of her cap is beaded (which was not easy to do on 32ct fabric!):

My fingers are itching to get back to that sweet little fairy; hoping to get a lot of progress this week--maybe get close to a finish on the first fairy...?

Hope everyone has a great stitchy week!