Of course, that doesn't help my poor little frozen garden. Those pepper plants produced peppers with a vengance this year. They were still producing when the freeze hit. I went out that day and harvested everything that was remaining. We took in a pretty good haul. After the freeze, the plants died and I found bunches of peppers that I hadn't even seen that were ready to harvest. Gee, I hope we get the same kind of plants next year. So, the garden looks sad right now. All of those plants are shriveled and dead. But we have some onions, garlic, carrots, cabbage and broccoli still growing. Those are all just baby plants but love the cooler weather. Once we clean up the garden, it will be pretty again, even in the winter.
This has been a glorious Christmas season for Cajun Stitchery. The work has come in and I can hardly keep up with it. Have I told you lately that I love to embroider. I have enjoyed every minute of it. All of the presents that we are embroidering makes me feel like Mrs. Santa or an elf. It is just delightful.
Those tea towels have sold like hotcakes. Especially the white ones. I had an order for 24 of the white tea towels and another order for 12, of course, with embroidery on them. We've gone through about 4 dozen of the white tea towels and I've ordered more. A friend of mine from Louisiana ended a recent email with "Heaux, Heaux, Heaux". Now isn't that cute. I embroidered the last 2 white tea towels with "Heaux, Heaux, Heaux" and 2 Santas. Hope the recent order of tea towels comes in real soon because I already have an order for those towels.
Speaking of towels, I ordered a dozen of the Martex towels from the same company where I get the tea towels. That's the same company that has disappointed me so much on the bath towels. I hope these are nice towels. If not, that's the last bath towels I will order from them. I just love their tea towels, though.
We have boxes of black satin jackets in the embroidery room. I was holding off on those because those orders were not for Christmas, but rather for Mardi Gras. I knew there was going to be some digitizing required and I wanted to incorporate the new mylar digitizing. One jacket is needed this coming Friday and another lady asked me if I could get her's to her before Christmas. I'm working on those 2 designs now and I think everyone will be pleased with the results.
I took one day to play on the embroidery machine. I did a couple of things that I have wanted to do for a long time. The first was puff embroidery, also called 3-D embroidery. These designs are specially digitized for puff foam. You know, craft foam. Some of the design is stitched out as usual. When you get to the satin stitches, you let the underlay stitch out and then place the foam on top. The satin stitches will then stitch. It's very high density for these satin stitches because you want them to cover the foam entirely. I did a pair of lips. There is no way that I can demonstrate with a photograph how this turned out. The outline of the lips and the highlights of the lips are elevated by the foam. Up close and personal, this towels is fabulous. It is so cool.
The other thing that I did was stitch'n'turn Christmas ornaments. Basically, it's an in-the-hoop (ITH) embroider design. However, the instructions tell you to cut a slit in the back to turn it and stuff with cotton or whatever you like, then slip stitch the slit closed. I did that on the first one, then I decided to make the back similar to a sham with 2 sides. This created a little pouch for a gift card, jewelry, candy, or little trinkets. And then they can be hung on the tree. Really cute. Then my eye caught a glimpse of my lame' fabric. Wow! Those ornaments created with lame' are bling, bling, bling.
I did take one of the bath towels and embroider the Heaux, Heaux, Heaux. Later, I sewed a strip of Christmas plaid fabric at the bottom. It really looks cool. I'm thinking about embroidering the word "Christmas" on the plaid part.
I'm under pressure to get this jacket done by Friday. Part of the pressure is me. I want it done. It's our Krewe mermaid in mylar. One of the girls in the krewe told me a month or two ago that my embroidery just doesn't have enough bling to it. I guess the truth is that I love heirloom embroidery and work on that premise all of the time. Those girls have no idea the options available in techniques with good old Boudreaux. We'll do mylar now. Someday I want to get into the traupunto, embroidered fringe and other techniques.
Ah, back to work. C'est tout, mes amis.
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