Almost done!

I can't believe I'm almost done! I got a better close up of the flowers and leaf area. I will clean up the edges, lint roll, and iron the piece at the very end.



So after the grasses and flowers are sewn on, the last piece was the cute little velvet red bird! I ended up hand stitching this on with an overcast stitch. I had thought about using a blanket stitch, but thought it might be too messy-looking, especially if the stitches would come out unevenly spaced. The overcast stitch (which I often get mixed up with the whipstitch) came out nicely on the bird, and you can barely tell it's stitched on! :)



Here's a close up shot:



Next, I had an internal battle about whether or not to sew on the numbers by hand or by machine. I measured where to put each foot mark and pinned each number down. I decided to machine sew with a very tight straight stitch. Worked out pretty well!



Unfortunately, the five foot mark cut into the cloud. Visually, it's kind of awkward. But this is a growth chart after all, and I couldn't have the 4 foot mark be the last measurement of a 6 foot tall chart. That would look even more awkward. If K decides she doesn't like it, though, it will be easy enough to remove.



Next... Adding batting, sewing front, middle, back together... adding dowels to the top and bottom... a rope to hang from... a bird eye... and we're DONE!