I’ve had a couple of projects lingering in the craft room for several months while I debated the details of them. This clock started its life when I asked my dad to cut me some circles out of wood to use as clock faces. He cut a few bonus shapes, too, which presented me a fun challenge of what to do with them. Months ago, I saw a stitched coffee table in Alabama Studio Style that I really liked. The idea of stitching in wood was really intriguing – combining hard & soft materials.
After sketching some designs, I drilled lots of tiny holes (and broke a few drill bits along the way). I painted it white, and then it sat for several months, while I tried a variety of thread colors and stitching patterns.
In the end, I decided on a blue-gray embroidery floss for the stitching, with thicker strands along the hour markings and a thinner border all the way around, in a simple starburst pattern. I really like how this turned out, but next time I will plan my drilling a little bit better so that there are an even number of holes – the stitching is a little inconsistent in order to use all the holes! Available in my etsy shop.
I assumed this would be a quick cut-off-the-bottom-and-rehem endeavor, so I carefully measured… and cut off a significant amount of fabric.
But, since this was a floor-length dress, it didn’t just go straight down from the hips. It gradually belled out so that you could actually walk in the dress, and it had a little bit of a train at the back. I didn’t think about this when I first cut & hemmed it, but the end result was that the last 6 inches or so of the newly-shortened dress still had a distinctive outward slant – which looks rather awkward on a short dress.
(I realize that this doesn’t look so bad in a photo, but it looked really awkward on me…)
Much better! I think it still needs something around the waist, and I think I can use the original sash, just wrap it around my waist twice to take in the extra length. But now my question is: knot in front, or in back? Or something else entirely?
