After the 'unpleasantness' at the still-standing Ice Palace, Elsa finds that she prefers smaller chandeliers.

Home is her ancestral castle now. Ice Castle's a tourist attraction.

Whoo-hoo ! It’s only Wednesday, and my Three Projects are done ! And yes, today’s free-standing lace (aka, stand alone lace,or  FSL) machine embroidery project was a success ! True, it took a long time, but I like the final product, and want to do more.

The three designs I bought from Urban Threads last week were a bit too complicated for a first-run trial. I mean, my total failures in the craft were years ago ! After studying all the free-standing stars, seashells, doll tiaras, holiday ornaments, hearts, bookmarks, heart-shaped bookmarks, flowers and lotsa other shapes in my FSL design stash, I decided to go for it and use an older Urban Threads design, one I bought just before I packed it all in for two years, and one that I truly regretted not doing when I was contemplating selling it all. So it was good to try it now. And it came out great ! 

Doesn’t photograph too well, so here’s the skinny – it’s a chandelier. What isn't black thread is eggplant tulle netting, but netting's not necessary, I know that now. Almost doll-size ! Due to their gothic flavor and flat construction, I thought they’d be perfect for MH doll and outfit swaps, or just small gifts for friends. Can mail one of these with a regular Forever stamp ! But it didn’t work as planned, and the whole thing got abandoned, if never forgotten. 

And here we are now. I used some of the fabric-style water-soluble stabilizer (aka Vilene) instead of the plastic kind (Solvy) – I have both in the stash. The one thing I don’t like much about stand-alone lace projects is that you can’t reuse any leftover stabilizer. Gotta throw it away, and of course, Solvy and Vilene are much more expensive than cutaway or tearaway. I also added a single piece of eggplant colored tulle netting, for added strength. You may remember I got a lawn and leaf bagload of the stuff from a neighbor’s yard sale, remnants from her wedding. Now that I have some confidence, I need to make her family something with this stuff. . . 

All in all, one of these chandeliers takes about two and a half hours, with two hours of that at the machine, the rest is prep work. It’s almost 45,000 stitches, and since the bobbin and top thread have to be the same, it’d take about a quarter to an eighth of a spool of embroidery thread to make one. And with all the colors thread comes in, you could have any chandelier to match any décor you or your dolls would like ! 

My Mother’s Day balloon weight came in handy, as each part wanted to pop up instead of dry flat. Speaking of those, the green heart one was halfway to the floor today, the bouquet one is still reaching for the ceiling. Darn impressive for Dollar Tree balloons ! And I’ve already found new uses for the sparkly weight / centerpiece. Keeping the balloons as closet door décor when they finally hit the floor – I love hanging keepsakes in unexpected places, always where I can see them when I need ‘em.