Karen Turner Stitching Life textile artist stitching by hand

October 2026 daily stitching

I’m beginning with a reminder that today is the last day you can purchase my pre-printed daily stitching fabric, for UK customers here, and for the rest of the world here. There won’t be pre-printed 2027 fabric, but I will make a video next month showing how I transfer the paper templates to cloth.

That’s the business announcements done, and now onto the real business — it’s hard to believe, but here we are at the end of another month.

A few stitches every day, and this is what happens.

Time flies, and no amount of stitching will tie it down. All we can do is watch it pass and place a few marks on cloth to say we saw it go.

Today’s square is top right in the photo above. The wheel turns, from autumn to winter. Inexorably, inevitably, nothing stands still.

The whole thing is a portrait of time. The joy is in the moment, and when the moment passes it becomes a memory, the past, in the blink of an eye.

Every day a little framed oasis, a refuge, a sanctuary.

We can look back, and we can look ahead, but we can only live in the transient, ephemeral moment we know as ‘now’.

Tomorrow is an intangible concept that changes some lives forever, and yet we are brave enough to keep moving towards it into the empty space ahead.

Present future

The new 2027 daily stitching templates will be available soon-ish, I hope by mid-November, if all goes well. You’ll see it here first, when it’s ready.

I always make a real-life sample first, using the prototype template before I make the PDF, just to see how it might look.

I really enjoyed the variety in the shapes – squares, circles, rectangles – and in the sizes, and I’m looking forward to beginning on 1st January.

It looks like daily stitching, but technically it isn’t daily stitching because I worked several sections a day in addition to my (separate) daily stitching for this year. I thought I would turn it into something useful.

Some sort of cover for your daily stitching is a good idea, mainly to keep it clean and dust-free when you’re not working on it.

In the meantime, you can see brief instructions for making this simple cover on my YouTube channel.

See you soon for the October daily stitching round-up (maybe that should be square-up).

Printed fabric for daily stitching

Just a quick reminder that my print-on-demand shops will close in ten days’ time on 31st October, so this is your last chance to buy pre-printed fabric for daily stitching.

You can find pre-printed fabrics at Spoonflower, and (for UK customers) at Woven Monkey. There won’t be a pre-printed version of the new 2027 template (coming soon as a PDF and it will be fairly straightforward to transfer it from paper to fabric).

For transparency, 90% of what you spend goes to Spoonflower or Woven Monkey, and the remaining 10% is paid as commission to me.

Downloadable PDF versions of all templates will continue to be available in my Big Cartel shop.

If you’ve ordered previously, thank you so much for your kind support.

Re-visioning

I did try very hard to like the circles that I had planned for next year’s daily stitching.

And actually, I do like them – but just not for daily stitching.

So I had to go back to the drawing board and do a bit of cutting-and-pasting.

2027 daily stitching template in progress

It’s turned out – unintentionally – to be very similar to this year’s. It’s another grid, but with a variety of different shapes – short rectangles, long rectangles, and squares (or circles). I’ve enjoyed the framework of the grid this year, and, as I primarily design these things in line with my own preferences, I’m using a grid design again. I also like the way a grid lets me find a use for my textured yarns.

I’m working up a little sample to make a protective cover for the 2027 stitching, and so far I think it will be fun.

I hope to have the new template available by the end of next month, if anyone wants to use it.

As always, it’s not a stitch-along, there are no prompts, and there’s nothing to sign up for. It’s just me doing a bit of hand stitching every day. If you can find a little peace and contentment in doing something similar, then that’s a good and beautiful thing.

If you’re new to the idea of daily stitching, there’s a stitch journal FAQ page here.

Until then, I’m having a little rummage in some lovely autumn colours…

…and keeping calm and carrying on.

Printed fabrics update

This is just to let you know that I will be closing my Spoonflower shop at the end of this month, 31st October. If you want to purchase fabric pre-printed with my daily stitching templates, please order it before the last week in October.

You can find my Spoonflower shop here.

I will also be closing my shop at Woven Monkey on the same date.

Please do remember that you’ll be buying from Spoonflower (or Woven Monkey, a UK-based print-on-demand shop), not from me; I don’t receive any information about who buys what so I can’t help you with your orders if anything goes wrong.

For transparency, the only payment I receive is 10% of whatever you spend, though Spoonflower withholds a further 30% of that because I’m not a US taxpayer. 90% of what you pay goes to the print-on-demand site.

If you’re buying from Spoonflower, I recommend their cotton/linen canvas, and you will need a yard of it if you want to stitch the whole year.

Thank you all for your previous support; I am sorry if this decision causes any disappointment for anyone.

September 2026 daily stitching

The end of another month, and it’s been another busy one.

As usual, just threading a needle every day to see what happens next.

You can see some of these blocks in action, happening (more or less) in real time on my YouTube channel.

There were my mother’s favourite flowers for her birthday earlier this month, and a heart for her pacemaker check up.

There were some long days

I really like the long/thin format and may well design a whole year like that some time.

A few people asked about this one:

It’s just herringbone stitch, worked quite closely in fine silk thread. You can get a lot of variety from simple stitches by changing the thread type, stitch size, and stitch proximity. Widely-spaced herringbone stitch looks very different from this closely-worked example.

And – I can hardly believe it myself – October tomorrow.

In other news, the shop is open again for thread. I don’t know, at this point, when I will be able to dye more thread so what’s there is what there is.

Also in other news, I’m road-testing the template for next year – just to see. The jury is still out but I think we may get a favourable verdict. There are some challenges and limitations with circles, which could make things a bit more interesting.

Preview of the 2027 template, under construction

If you’re doing your own daily stitching, I hope you’re enjoying it and finding a little peace in a few quiet moments with needle and thread.

Taking a break

Just to let you know I’ll be taking a short break next week for a week or two, depending on how much down time there is. It’s all been very full-on this summer, as you know, and I think there’s space for me to slow down a bit now.

I’ll be closing the shop for tangible items (thread and fabric) from lunchtime on Friday 11th September, and I’ll re-open later this month. My Teachable school doesn’t have a holiday mode so that will remain open as usual. If you need to contact me about any problems with access etc, please be patient as I won’t be checking emails every day.

See you on the other side 🙂

Shipping update

Good news for some, and you saw it here first:

I have now re-opened international shipping for Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

I’m very sorry that I still can’t ship to Europe or Northern Ireland; that’s due to changes caused by Brexit and there’s unfortunately nothing I can do about it. I hope to resume shipping to USA at some point but I will need to dig around for current information on the tariffs. I will look at that as soon as I have the time.

Please be aware (wherever you are) that I may not be able to post items as quickly as I usually do. I am still a bit all over the place, here and there attending to other things.

Thank you as always for your valued support of my little hand-dyed thread boutique.

August 2026 daily stitching

You will see from my lack of blog posts this month that August has been exceptionally busy. Time has disappeared in a blur of house-clearing and charity shop runs. My mother’s dementia has reached the stage where she is now unable to live alone, even with daily care, and I have to sell her house to pay her care home fees. All of it is hard. I look mostly ok from the front, but the back is a mess; much messier than the back of the cloth.

The cloth, and daily stitching, has helped with maintaining a sense of equilibrium and normality.

I find that each daily block isn’t intended to mean anything, or depict that particular day. It’s just a few stitches, in any colour. Part distraction, part escape, part immersion. Mostly restorative.

The exception this month was the solar eclipse on the 12th, which is loosely pictorial. A once-in-a-generation astronomical event kind of deserves its own spotlight, I thought.

You can see some of this month’s daily stitching in the August playlist on my YouTube channel

And the year so far:

Two-thirds of the year down, one to go. I had better start thinking about next year’s template.

July 2026 daily stitching

The last day of July today, and time seems to be flying even faster than usual. As always, I’ve been catching a few moments of each day and stitching them down. Time is life, and the most precious thing we have.

You can see some of the daily blocks for this month in the July playlist on my You Tube channel.

Summer is probably my least favourite season overall, but I’ve enjoyed using a brighter colour palette. I have a new collection of hand-dyed threads in summer/early autumn colours in my shop (sorry, UK-only shipping for now).

July has been very challenging, personally, but I am focusing on one day at a time and placing stitches like footsteps. Eventually the path will lead to a quieter calmer place.

And tomorrow, August begins. It’s intriguing to think that all those blank spaces will be full in just thirty-one days’ time.

I hope you’re enjoying your own daily stitching adventure, if you’ve embarked on such a thing. If nothing else, it provides a little quiet breathing space in a busy day.

Have a lovely weekend, and happy stitching.

Karen Turner Stitching Life

October 2026 daily stitching

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Present future

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Printed fabric for daily stitching

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Re-visioning

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Printed fabrics update

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September 2026 daily stitching

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Taking a break

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Shipping update

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August 2026 daily stitching

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July 2026 daily stitching

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