Let’s Start Making a Giveaway Pansy Penny Rug Candle Mat!

Now ladies.

LADIES.

I’m not doing a giveaway yet!

I’m “PREPARING” for the giveaway.

I must have confused quite a few of you with my previous post because many of you entered into a giveaway that didn’t exist!

:) This made me smile and it also made me realize, AGAIN, that I need to be really careful with how I type my words.

Yes, I’m making a Pansy Candle mat for a giveaway. But I have to make it first! Once it’s made, THEN I will have a giveaway drawing.

So those of you who entered in the drawing that doesn’t exist, just think of it as “practice warm-up” to get you ready for the real thing.

Those first 5 of you, Paulette, Rocking Chair Stitches, Darlene, Linda and Diane H, all guessed correctly that I was going to use the purple, yellow and green wools to make pansies!

Congrats ladies, you five will get one extra entry for the giveaway once I finish the candle mat and actually have the giveaway.

I’ll give another Trivia Question at the end of this post.

Remember, I’m not doing the giveaway until I have the candle mat finished!

Ok, here’s an example of what I’m going to make for my one year blogaversary giveaway:

This is one from last year. I made a ridiculous number of these last year for orders. I also made it with a white background:

And honestly, I couldn’t tell you which background color I liked the best. They both are just exceptionally nice in their own way.

For the giveaway, I will be making the pansies with the black background, simply because I have the new black wool all washed, felted and ready to use whereas the white wool is still on the bolt, in a box, unfelted.

So let’s start making this!

So, I did say that I made quite a few of these candle mats last year, but unfortunately, I didn’t bother to create an actual pattern for the design. Therefore, this drawing is all I have to work with to make another one. I vaguely remember how I did it, but I’ll have to measure and start from scratch with that center circle and the stems that curve off of it.

I grabbed up this little glass dish to use for the center circle. It’s about 4” in diameter, so I traced around it with a chalk pencil.

Center circle is drawn in the middle. Now I’ll measure and draw in those pinwheel type stems.

I measured and marked, with my chalk pencil, where I need the lines to be drawn … and using my handy dandy candy dish again, I used the outside curve shape of it to draw in the arches.

There ya go! Chalk lines are all drawn in so now I start stictching…

Using green #5 DMC, I stem stitched along all the lines.

Most of the time when I mark with chalk pencil, I only mark a small area at a time because if done in a large area, like this, the chalk lines tend to rub off and disappear. In this case though, because there’s so much exact measuring involved with the lines, I chalk marked the entire thing and I just made sure to keep the chalk pencil handy to remark some of the rubbed off unstitched areas.

After stitching this much on stretchy wool, I’ll steam press the backside of this with a pressing cloth to get it to lay super nice and flat again. I love how wool goes so nicely right back into shape with a good steam press.

So, to remind y’all again, this isn’t a giveaway yet. Hopefully next week, after Easter, I’ll be able to finish the candle mat. At that time, I will do the official giveaway.

Until then, let’s do another Trivia question contest, ok?

The pansy question was way too easy ..and this one should be easy too ... I will be making them more difficult as the week goes on ....

What are the names of my two daughters?

The first person to get this right will earn ONE EXTRA ENTRY in the One Year Blogaversary Pansy Candle Mat Giveaway, which will be held AFTER I finish making the Pansy Candle Mat!

Happy Day Everyone!