On the whole, I’m not too keen on assembling any embroidery that I have made. After all that work, it could go horribly wrong, so I tend to put it off!I’ve got to the point now where I am sewing the two sides of my bride’s bag together, and attaching them to the purse frame.
This shows the two sides of the bag. I realised, as I took this picture, that it’s the last time that these two pieces of embroidery will ever be seen alongside each other (unless someone in the future takes my bag apart, that is!).
I made a second set of bag sides, and some narrow strips of fabric to bind the purse frame, all from the gold satin that I’m going to use to line the bag.
Tacking the end of one length of the binding to itself, I began wrapping the binding around the frame, so that I’d have something to slip stitch the bag to, and also to attach the lining to. Hopefully, I can successfully hide all of this when the bag is finished, as, at the moment, it doesn’t look too tidy 😦
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Janet Granger's Blog 
It looks great. I know the nervousness of cutting away the excess fabric and doing things that don’t come as naturally as embroidery to me. I think you’ll do fine. The embroidery is beautiful.
I’ve been known to completely finish a piece of stitching in the past, and never assemble it, so I know this is something I need to tackle!!
Gorgeous work!
I hate assembling things too – mainly cos I’m a right lazy cow
I like how asymetrical the designs are, they look lovely finished
Yes, I’d rather be stitching than assembling 🙂 I think Shirley Holdaway has great skill in designing asymmetrical patterns that still have ‘balance’ – it makes them very interesting to stitch.
That is BEAUTIFUL!!!
It will look so beautiful when put together……..
This is gorgeous in pieces. It’s going to be absolutely stunning put together.
I’m trying to learn to love finishing. I don’t know why it should be more intimidating than the actual embroidery, but it is for me. I love the gold lining you’re using. It picks up the goldwork really well.
Yes, I agree with you – I can tackle virtually any style of embroidery, and love it, even if the technique is new to me, but assembling things is always a bit traumatic. Maybe it’s because I don’t tend to do ‘quick and easy’ projects, so everything I’ve made has taken me ages, so if I ruin it at the last stage, it would seem like a disaster. If I’d only spent an hour on some basic backstitched outline, and left it in the hoop to display it, I wouldn’t feel I’d wasted much effort (but then I wouldn’t have wanted to spend any time stitching something like that, either!).
The fear of messing up so much work is definitely a key part of the reluctance! I’ve never assembled anything quite so complicated as this bag, or some of the doll furniture stitching you’ve done.
Actually, the miniature embroidery kits that I sell I have no problems assembling – they’ve been designed to be simple to do. There are tutorials on my website showing people how to do it, before they commit to buying a kit, so I have to be sure that they’re easy to do, or I’d have some unhappy customers! Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that I’ve been doing mini embroidery for years, so I’m comfortable with the scale of it. But I do think that the time investment has a lot to do with the reluctance I have with assembling stumpwork, in particular.
I am very impressed at the scale of both the embroidery and the assembly. I think I assume it must be difficult because the end results are so lovely. Glad to hear they are actually simple!