Autumnal Equinox Day

Today is the national holiday, Autumnal Equinox Day.  This holiday was established in 1948 as a day to honor one's ancestors and remember the dead. Prior to 1948, the autumnal equinox was an imperial ancestor worship festival called Shūki kōrei-sai. This is not a Happy Monday Holiday.

The Queen is taking a nap

I decided to take a break from the Queen and I pulled out this small Blackwork ornament kit that I purchased from Marion Scoular. The kit contains everything but the thread and fabric for backing: the directions, written in Marion’s unique script; the four inch ornament finishing form; three needles; flannel padding; template; and sparkly fabric for stitching the design. 

 

She had a lot of different designs for these ornament kits and also sold the finishing forms separately, if you wanted to make more than one ornament or use your own design.  I chose the daffodil pattern.  Her patterns are always easy to understand and the charted design even shows the path to make the design reversible. The design is stitched with one strand of DMC floss.  After stitching the design, I covered one side of the ornament form with the stitched design and the other with fabric.

 

I stitched the two together and added some twisted cord for the hanger.  I was happy with how I joined them together so I decided not to put cording all the way around. Start to finish in a day!