And 2 More

I cut the fabrics out last night and ironed on the interfacing in preparation for sewing them together today. I'm a pretty slow sewist so all told, each bag takes me a couple of hours.

I made one like this before and gave it as a Christmas gift. I now have made another one for me. I really like the lining fabric.

and the paisley pattern.

This fabric has been in my stash for years.

I certainly have enough UFOs and projects I want to start for Christmas in July to fill these bags.

I did a bit more stitching on my Starburst Flag of Canada piece. If you like doing eyelets, you'll love this piece. And it's available for instant download. The threads and fabric were all from my stash. 

July 1 is only 5 days away. I need to get my Christmas in July projects ready. 

I don't have anything big planned to stitch but these ornaments caught my eye.

From the August 2019 JCS issue:

Silvery Lace Snowflake by Arlene Cohen of WorksByABC:

And from the 2020 Christmas Ornament issue:

'O Christmas Tree by Lisa LeAnn Designs: (Yes! More eyelets, and smyrnas, and scotch stitches.)

and Poinsettia by Evdokia Nikolaeva.

In place of some of the beads I will affix 'jewels' with my HotFix tool.

In July, I also plan to peruse back issues of stitching magazines and Christmas charts. I also have a bunch of the hardbound Leisure Arts books from the 90s that I haven't looked through in ages.

My heart is very heavy with the knowledge that so many children were hurt, became ill, and died during Canada's cultural genocide program of residential 'schools'. I cannot even imagine what it must have been like to have been taken from your home and family, had your treasured hair cut, and put in an environment where everything you knew to that point was figuratively and literally beaten out of you. Then to be beaten to death or become ill with tuberculosis and die without loving people around you, only to be buried, possibly in a grave another child was ordered to dig. In some of these places of torture over 50% of the children died of TB. Their families never knew what became of their children.

Generations of Indigenous children were not raised with their loving parents and families. In many cases they were abused physically and sexually by the religionists, sanctioned by our Governments, who thought they knew better and enacting their 'solution to the Indian problem'.

We know better now. We need to teach these truths in schools so we can have a greater understanding of what our First Nations People endured at the hands of the Europeans who settled here and prospered at their expense. We need to honour the dead and their family members. 

This  Canada Day, I will most definitely not be celebrating our nation's 154th birthday. Not his year.