A Shower - finished and fully-finished!

Hello all!

I didn't think it would be long before this little cutie became a finish instead of a WIP, and I was right (although it's taken me a few weeks to post about it due to taking a long time to fully-finish it off). Over the half-term school holiday (last week of October) I was able to put in some long stints and stitch later into the night (read early mornings) than I would normally. Half-term couldn't have been more appropriately timed for completing this piece!

Here's how I left A Shower after ten hours:

And finished:

A Shower by Soda Stitch

Stitched on 16ct Margarita over-dyed aida by sewitall.com 2 over 1

Stitch count 60 wide by 53 high

Started - 28th September 2018

Finished - 27th October 2018

Total stitching time - 19 hours 30 minutes

I don't usually take any photos before adding backstitching but thought I would with this piece just to remind myself what a difference it can make.

Instead of making it into my usual ornie I had a few different ideas about how I would like to finish-finish it. But bearing in mind I will probably want to finish all my Soda Stitch designs the same, when it came down to it, the ornie won. However, there are differences to my usual finishing style; it's been given a heavy helping of cuteness, perhaps even sickliness if you don't like fancy things!

How's this for starters:

But there's more - the final finishing touch...

... complete with a tiny bow:

I told you it had been given a heavy dose of cuteness!

The fabric is from a Hobbycraft green-toned FQ bundle, and the ribbon is plain 10mm lime organza.

[For those of you in the UK who need backing fabric, might I suggest you check out the FQ bundles at Hobbycraft (in store and on line). I've picked up quite a few in various colour tones and themes. They're very reasonably priced and not bad quality either.]

I think having the fabric showing on the front to give the design a border really works. And as for the ribbon, well, I will totally understand and not be offended at all if you say you don't like it, but I think it works in adding that finishing touch.

All of the fabric borders were stitched on by hand and took three attempts before I was happy. And as for the ribbon, that also took two failed attempts to work out how to gather and attach it before I came up with what I considered to be an easy, but time-consuming, solution. It took a lot of ribbon though - almost 5m for a 72cm perimeter! Not that it needed to be gathered so much, but less didn't quite look right.

If I do finish an ornie like this again I would definitely create a bigger fabric border but that's about the only thing I'd change.

If you're interested I took step-by-step photos along the way which I would be willing to share as a sort of tutorial. I didn't want to bore you with them here but let me know if you'd like to see them and I'll do a separate post at some point to let you in on my secrets. ;)

Take care,
Rachel x