A stitched clock.

I haven't done any crafty posts lately, so I guess it's about time to show you guys what I made my mom for Christmas. :)

She loves cuckoo clocks. When I was trying to figure out what to make her, I remembered this pattern. And these instructions. And this is how things turned out:

The embroidery was time consuming but pretty simple. It was all the other stuff that was difficult. :) I bought the wood panel- a little larger than I wanted, but it was the closest they had- at Hobby Lobby and stained it with some gel stain stuff that they sell near the acrylic paint.

Glue and I usually don't get along, so I was nervous about gluing the embroidery down. So I used one of those sticky mounting boards instead. This was the hardest part- cutting the heavy board out in the basic shape of the embroidery. It took forever! I couldn't get smooth curves and the blade kept falling out of my craft knife.

Then I put the embroidery on it and smoothed things out, gluing the fabric to the back.

Then came the most nerve-wracking part: cutting a hole in the center of the embroidery for the clockworks to fit in. Cutting a hole in an embroidery piece that has taken hours to complete it not easy. :)

My dad drilled a hole in the wood, and he helped me put the clock part together, too. I had bought a 3/8 inch deep clock piece at first, because that's the biggest they had in stock. But it wasn't nearly long enough so I had to go back and exchange it for a 3/4 inch one.

It wasn't as easy of a project as I thought it would be, but I'm really happy with how it turned out. I think Marmee is, too. :)

I also knitted her some dishrags, about five in all. I found the instructions through Google but I can't remember the link. But it's basically:

Cast on four stitches.
Row 1: Knit.
Row 2: K2, Y0, then K to the end of the row.
Repeat row 2 until you reach around 55 stitches.
Then K1, K2tog, YO, K2tog, then K to the end of the row.
Repeat until four stitches are left, bind off.

It was my first time working with cotton yarn...at first it drove me crazy because it doesn't really stretch like wool, etc. does. But I got used to it and actually ended up liking it.

Until next time,