Karen Turner Stitching Life textile artist stitching by hand

Back to work

It wasn’t much of a week off in the end, because – surprise – this happened:

hand dyed threads drying in the sunshine

I just got lucky with the weather – decent light followed by a good drying day – so thought I would seize the day and all that. I’ll have a couple of easy days this week to make up for it.

I did manage to catch up with myself a bit on the other days. I got to the end of Tabula Rasa, and I’m not sure that’s its name any more but I’ve yet to think of a better one.

I also enjoyed a little mixed media sketchbook exploration with some motifs based on the stitching.

The thread will take a while to wind but in the meantime there is probably enough left in the shop to cover thread-based emergencies.

For various reasons, I’ve decided to streamline and simplify my shop contents. For the time being I won’t be making more fabric packs, so most remaining fabrics are currently in the shop on sale to clear. Prices have already been adjusted so you don’t need discount codes, and when they’re gone they’re gone so be quick if you’re interested. I hope you can find something lovely to add to your collection.

hand painted sheer fabric scraps for layering

Back to work after a holiday used to mean my apathetic return to the office where a thousand emails were waiting for me. These days back to work means winding beautiful thread by an open window listening to a robin singing in the garden. What luck. Hope your week is going well too.

Taking a short break

I’ll be taking a break soon so my online shop will close at lunchtime GMT (ish) on Wednesday 25th February and will reopen week commencing 9th March.

Teachable doesn’t seem to have a vacation mode, so that will remain open and accessible for online classes and PDF template downloads. If you need to contact me and it can’t wait a couple of weeks, please be patient because I won’t be checking emails every day.

There will probably be a daily stitching video on my YouTube channel tomorrow but after that I’m largely unplugging from social media for a week or so.

I’ll be having some quiet time at home, maybe working a bit on these:

Back in early March.

Threads update

A (very) small update this week with a few extra threads for the shop.

Limited quantity of Random threads collections

What’s currently in the shop is all I have until later in the spring, so when it’s gone it’s gone.

silk threads, limited quantities remaining

I hope to have a dyeing day next month – or even later this month, if we get lucky with the weather. I need good light and a couple of decent drying days, so let’s see what the weather gods bring us. After dyeing it’ll be a few weeks of winding and labelling skeins, so I’m aiming for new thread in the shop by late March/early April.

In the meantime I’m finding time for a few quilting/couching/stitching lines on the quilt.

Hope your week is going well.

Studio time

My new year’s resolution to work smarter seems to be going well, and for the first time in years I find that I do in fact have some time for my own work as well as the business.

I did a little more on the winter sketchbook. It may be early spring, and the snowdrops are looking beautiful, but the weather is decidedly behind the curve so I feel justified in clinging to glorious cold winter for as long as I can.

winter sketchbook page with found poetry lines

winter sketchbook page, mixed media collage

winter sketchbook page, handmade paper collage

I’m also trying to be a bit more organised about what goes where. My Ikea drawers are very slightly short of A4 size in the width, so I made some custom trays out of mount board and they fit nicely, two per drawer.

mark-making tools, rounded up and contained

The sides are covered with 2″ wide washi tape that I found hiding in another drawer. I should probably line the boxes to make them prettier but for now I’m happy enough with functional.

stencils and collagraphs all neat and tidy

And finally, I’ve resurrected a patchwork quilt top that’s had quite a few false starts.

I had a look at it, wasn’t happy with it, and decided to unpick everything and start again. I wanted a fairly big circle on the surface and didn’t have a yarn that was anything like what I had in mind.

I’ve ended up stringing lots of thin threads together to create something like what I wanted. It’s a very fine silk noil yarn that dyed beautifully but is no good for stitching with – breaks too easily, too nobbly – but a few strands together are couching down quite nicely.

I’m wondering if maybe the whole thing will be couched rather than quilted. Always an adventure.

Hope your week is going well.

January 2026

Time flies. The first month of daily stitching for 2026 is complete, and the cloth fills up almost on its own while we’re looking the other way.

There were early days

There were cold sparkly frosty days

And in-between days

New for this year are YouTube videos of daily stitching. Definitely not every day but maybe once or twice a week, when I can. I have some responsibilities at present, and much depends on how much of that needs my attention.

For now, we go onward into February

And some snowdrops for Imbolc

If you’re having your own daily stitching adventure this year, I hope you’re enjoying it as much as I am. This is my fifth year, and it’s still just as necessary and enjoyable as it ever was. I think of it as a little oasis of peace in an increasingly turbulent world.

Zero waste collage tags

Firstly: I’m delighted to report that the biodegradable nitrile gloves have completely solved the problem. I’d expected to lose some dexterity with gloves on, but if you get the correct size they fit really well and you hardly notice them.

So hurrah for that.

If you’ve ever ordered any tangible items from my Big Cartel shop, you’ll probably have received one of my hand-painted thank you tags.

Stocks of these are running a bit low, as you can see. Instead of cutting into new sheets of watercolour paper I thought I’d use up a collection of cartridge paper/card offcuts that weren’t suitable for taking paint but were fine for collage.

Using the painted paper offcuts from last week’s sketchbook collage fest, plus a few more colourful tiny scraps, I’ve used almost every last bit of everything. It’s very satisfying to create something out of what we might call nothing – though everything is something – and hardly anything going in the bin or recycling.

Collage on this scale is very easy, and a simple process. Mini-landscapes at their most basic are just horizontal strips of colour, and they can look very effective with some straightforward mark-making or stamping. I used a corner rounder punch to shape the tops.

I haven’t counted them but there’s possibly a couple of hundred here, enough to keep us all in thank you tags for a while yet.

And finally, while I had all the collage supplies out on the table: I’m taking part again in the annual Postcard Art Exhibit, held this year in the Netherlands in June and raising money for people affected by Alzheimer’s. There’s still plenty of time if you want to contribute a 5″ x 7″ artwork to be sold for this year’s charity. Go to https://www.postcardartexhibit.com before mid-March to register.

‘When you were there’ – 5″ x 7″ mixed media collage with found poetry

Winter: studio time

So far my plans for smarter working this year are going well, and I’ve found a little time here and there for some creative play. I’m not entirely comfortable calling it ‘studio time’ because I don’t have a studio and also I’m not ‘an artist’ in the establishment sense of the word. Middle-aged woman tearing up paper in the spare bedroom doesn’t really sound all that engaging though.

I guess we are all artists, in our own way.

I’ve been working on (playing with) collaging the pages of an old 6″ x 8″ notebook, using my own painted papers. You learn how to do this in my Painted Collage Paper and Mark-Making course, by the way. A little self-promotion there from my Marketing Manager (that’s me).

I’m intending a celebration of winter in this sketchbook. If you’ve been with me a while, you’ll know it’s my favourite season, and January is my favourite month. It’s cold, it’s still dark, it’s grey, it’s quiet, and nothing much happens, and all of that suits me perfectly. And we’re half way through it already. It’s ok, I like spring too.

For now all I’ve done is cover the pages with printed/painted papers. I’ll go back in to each page with either more paint, mark-making, more collage, or some text.

I’m really enjoying the muted colour palette.

There is, however, a slightly perplexing problem. I appear to have developed contact dermatitis, but only this week, and only on my right hand. Since I’ve been handling paper with both hands, my prime suspect is the acrylic medium I’ve used to stick the papers down. It seems odd to suddenly develop an allergy to something you’ve been using for years, but I can’t think what else it could be. I’ll try some (biodegradable) gloves and see if that solves the problem.

Wearing gloves is probably sensible in any case when working with paints and inks.

It’s been a good few months since I made time for activities like this, and I realise how important and restorative it is. I’m being very strict about my working hours (no social media at weekends, no working beyond 5pm, and a weekly half-day for creative exploring).

So far so good. Wish me luck with the gloves!

Thread storage

I’ve been posting some daily stitching videos on my YouTube channel since 1st January.

I won’t post a daily stitching video every day, mainly because I can’t be available 365 days a year, but also because sometimes I just want to stitch quietly on my own without explaining anything. There might be a video tutorial maybe once or twice a week. Ish.

But as a result of the videos, a few people were asking where they can buy the spools I store my thread on.

You probably could buy them somewhere, or you could use sections of drinking straws, but it’s easier and cheaper to make them yourself as I do.

There’s a video tutorial for that here

I hope you’re enjoying your daily stitching, if you’re embarking on a new year-long adventure. The whole huge blank canvas can look quite daunting at this time of year, but time flies and the days soon fill up if you just focus on one day at a time. Good advice for life too, I guess.

And so we continue.

Continuing

A new beginning or just continuing, it’s all the same really.

Today is about the Roman god Janus who looks back to the year just gone and forward at what’s to come. Stitches pointing backwards, and stitches pointing ahead.

There’s a video of this one on my YouTube channel. I might do a video of tomorrow’s stitching too, but there definitely won’t be a video every day.

I’ve never intended the daily stitching to be a challenge or a stitch-along; I don’t provide prompts, themes, or directions for daily stitching. It’s more about being guided by your own intuition, and stitching something that is meaningful for you.

Hope everyone’s new year has got off to a good beginning.

New Year’s Eve 2025

And here we are, the end of the year already.

365 blocks of hand embroidery, one every day for twelve months, each stitch witnessing the passage of time.

Time is all we have, and time is all that we are. We have time, we make time, we find time, we save time, we spare time, we waste time, we spend time. We are time.

This year’s stitching is about 7″ wide and 122″ long, cotton and silk embroidery threads on vintage cotton/linen blend.

People ask me what will I do with it. I don’t ‘do’ anything with it. It’s enough for it to be itself, a surface onto which I have inscribed time with needle and thread, a cloth I have held in my hands every day for a year, a cloth that holds and remembers moments from my life. The cloth will still be here when I am not.

New Year’s Eve is a time for a final glance back, over our shoulder, before we move unsteadily forward into more of the unknown.

Of course this is not the end, nor is it a new beginning. It’s just the continuation of time. Tomorrow is only ever the day after today, when we gather ourselves to begin again.

Happy new year to you all, and happy stitching if you’re embarking on a new stitch adventure for 2026.

2025: all of it

You can find my daily stitching PDF templates here, information about pre-printed fabric from Spoonflower here, and information about my online classes here. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel here for occasional daily stitching videos.

Karen Turner Stitching Life

Back to work

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Taking a short break

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Threads update

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Studio time

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January 2026

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Zero waste collage tags

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Winter: studio time

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Thread storage

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Continuing

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New Year’s Eve 2025

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