I’ve staked out a table in the Darn Good Room, covered it with books, fabrics, fibers, needles, ribbon, and my clipboard with scrap paper for taking notes. I’m designing and testing different ways to finish bookmarks.

While stitchers like to stitch pretty patterns and designs, many don’t care for finishing projects; that’s why there are finishing companies, framers, snap-together finishing kits, and loads of ready-made items with surfaces to stitch. Being an extreme DIYer, I love finishing stitched items from scratch. So I’m developing ideas and will write instructions for finishing bookmarks so we can all make good use of scraps and stash.

As with all creating, sitting down (BIC) and just doing it generates ideas . . . and more ideas . . . and more. Ideas are like rabbits; put a couple together and they multiply quickly. It’s no wonder. Criminey, it’s fun!

Because so many stitchers hesitate to finish items from scratch, even claiming they don’t have the necessary skills (bah!), I’m focusing on super-easy methods, from no-sew techniques to simple hand sewing. I’ve got twice as many methods as I set out to create, and I’m trying to squish them into four basic groups for four class lessons–which will probably end up being two-parters. Seriously, I can’t stop.

And since I never met an idea I couldn’t complicate, variations and additions keep cropping up. And they’re cool! I want to stitch them the moment I conceive them.

So I think there will have to be two classes: a Super-Easy class and a Fine-and-Fancy class. The first will not be a pre-requisite for the second, though. They will simply offer different methods–different levels of complexity–of finishing. None too hard, I promise. It’s needlework, not rocket science.