curated Benzie felt & floss color guide for Lady Dancing ornaments

All three of these Lady Dancing ornaments were made with my hand-picked Benzie color bundle #5, shown below. It's the same color bundle that was also used for Gold Ring.

You can purchase just the felt or there's an option for the felt bundle plus matching flosses:

Lady Dancing/Gold Ring Benzie Felt Colors are:
Ochre
Mustard
Bronze (this color is now discontinued and Castle will be subbed)
Copper
Swan
Peacock
Pool
Blue
Flamingo
Magenta

You always need matching flosses when you sew layers together, so having the floss bundle comes in handy and helps build your embroidery stash. There are also bundles for the other Twelve Days ornaments in that same listing.

Note: You will also need some additional contrasting flosses to do the decorative embroidery shown in the sample photos, which is listed below. 

Here are the color guides for each Lady Dancing sample:

Magenta/pink/blue Lady colors:

FELT:
Swan: Cap, single flower petal
Ochre: Shawl collar
Mustard: Overskirt flowers
Flamingo: Sleeves, underskirt
Magenta: Cap flower, upper torso, overskirt
Peacock: Lower torso, bodice, double flower petals

DECORATIVE EMBROIDERY:
DMC white
DMC 154

DMC 3845
DMC 3844
DMC 3766
DMC 783
DMC 3804

Periwinkle/mustard/navy Lady colors:

FELT:
Pool: Sleeves, overskirt, cap flower
Mustard: Underskirt
Ochre: Shawl collar
Blue: Body
Magenta: Cap, overskirt flowers, single petal
Copper: Bodice, double petals

DECORATIVE EMBROIDERY:
DMC white
DMC 3804

DMC 918
DMC 794
DMC 783
DMC 792
DMC 823

Mustard/teal/copper Lady colors:

FELT:
Mustard: Sleeves, overskirt, single petal
Peacock: Underskirt, upper torso, cap, overskirt flowers
Copper: Bodice, double petals, lower torso, cap flower
Swan: Shawl collar

DECORATIVE EMBROIDERY:
DMC white
DMC 783
DMC 918
DMC 3808
DMC 934

There are a total of six curated bundles of Benzie felt for the Twelve Days patterns, and you can purchase them all under that same Benzie listing in the drop down menu. See this post for links to all of the Twelve Days color guides.

Happy hand sewing!

Were you naughty or nice?

Santa's checking right now. Merry Christmas to everyone far and near! I'm wishing you a wonderful, peaceful, delicious day in which you feel surrounded by the love of God and the warm company of friends and family.

This is a photo I took years ago of one of my very favorite ornaments. It's one that was my husband's when he was little and I love it so. I keep having to glue his tiny pencil back on over his ear.

Soooooooo...I have to confess, y'all...it's not looking great for a Lord a-Leaping release by new year's eve. I'm working on Mr Grand Finale but he's being difficult and tricky. Leaping can so easily translate as spaz attack instead. It's a fine line. I'm going to take the time needed to get him just right and if that means extending over into the new year, that is what it means. *sound of slow air leak from personal goal balloon*

The bonus ornament is going swimmingly though! It looks awesome. I can't wait to show you that one! (Patterns 1, 6 and 12 all have a 2nd ornament included -- I think you'll LOVE this one. Truly. hint hint.) I'll be updating you guys again by the new year to let you know how it's going, but for now--

God bless us, every one!

Lady Dancing pattern now available!

On the eleventh day of Christmas,

My true love sent to meeee...

Eleven ladies dancing!

I'm delighted to announce the eleventh pattern in my Twelve Days ornaments series has sashayed its way into my Etsy and Craftsy shops. Are you new to this series? Pop over to this post to see lots of helpful information about it.

If you know the modern Twelve Days of Christmas song by heart, you might be saying to yourself, 'Wait, I thought day eleven was Pipers Piping?' And you'd be right! However, my series is based on the original carol from 1780 and the order toward the end is a bit different than the modern one. It's all good – you can number your ornaments any way you like! That's the cool thing about DIY.

These three dancing lady samples were made with the Benzie felt bundle no. 5, (Gold Ring and Lady Dancing). You can of course make your ornaments in whatever colors you like! For those of you who want to make ornaments just like these samples, the specific color guide for them with DMC floss numbers included will be coming soon in a separate post.

Making these Twelve Days ornaments is way easier than you might think because of a magical, printable Sulky stabilizer that adheres to the wool felt. You basically print my pattern to Sulky Stick 'n Stitch, stick it on the felt and embroider on the lines. No pattern piece tracing or embroidery transferring. It's super duper! (The pattern pictured above is from the 1st pattern in the series, Partridge & Pear.)

This diminutive dancing damsel design (sorry, couldn't resist) was a little reluctant coming together. Some designs click right into place from the very beginning and some designs you have to wrestle with for a while. She was a little tricky because I think I had way too many ideas for her that were all trying to come together on one ornament. I had trouble committing. After stitching through three regenerations of the Doctor on Amazon streaming video, I prevailed. Four if you count no. ten's Doctor Donna instantaneous biological meta crisis.

On to Lord a-Leaping...it's looking a little doubtful he'll come in under the new year's wire I've set up for myself in my head, but I'm going to give it my best try!