I’ll admit that I am often caught up in the excitement of new projects at the expense of finished or nearly finished work. So while not actually making any type of new year’s resolution (not my type of thing) I have been making a conscious effort to finish off projects which are nearly complete but stored on a shelf, waiting to be made into something or otherwise employed.

My first successfully finished item of this year is this pillow made from a piece of botanical embroidery I posted last November.

Quite honestly, I did not love sewing this piece. I was in over my head with trying to set the embroidered linen into the surrounding fabric. Not a quilter, I had to work hard to make the angles and corners work out. (If I had included myself in this photo, you would see the crazed look that was in my eye at that point.)

I can thank this extremely thorough tutorial on making welting for the relative ease with which I accomplished that part of the project. (I always knew to make welting on the bias, but now I know why!)

Overall, the experience confirmed the troubled relationship I have with my sewing machine, but I am thilled to have it finished, off the shelf and sitting primly on a chair.