Intuitive Daily Stitching for 8th March, celebrating International Women’s Day.
There’s a video and brief written instructions for this on my YouTube channel here.
Have a lovely weekend.
Happy International Women’s Day
Category: stitch journal
February 2025
Always a short month, but this year it seems shorter than usual. I’m ending this month with an anniversary, as today is a year since we moved in to our current home.
It’s taken a while for it to feel like home, but it does now and I’m looking forward to seeing our new garden grow a bit more this year. The seeds and ideas that we plant can take a while to yield visible results, and what starts as a scrap or fragment becomes part of something much bigger once it starts to grow. It all happens in its own time.
I’ve enjoyed using up scraps and odd ends this month.
Running stitch, whipped running stitch, and couching are probably still my favourites. I like lines. Time lines, perhaps.
Mostly it’s mark-making with needle and thread.
There is a lovely darn on the edge of this linen, presumably made many years ago. I’m guessing this linen was probably hand-woven on a home loom because the width is much narrower than a machine-made sheet would be, and the selvedge that you can see beside the darn had originally been in the centre of the sheet where two widths had been joined. Someone, long ago and in a different home, carefully mended this cloth for the future, and their future is my present. Time does stand still sometimes.
Holding time in stitches, weaving between past and future.
The long view:
And the other side:
Onward to March. Marching onward. See what I did there.
Have a lovely weekend.
January 2025
January can be a long month for many, particularly if you don’t like winter, but for me it flew by as quickly as any other.
As always, it was a case of threading a needle and beginning, with no preconception of how it might turn out. There are some blocks I like less than others, but that’s to be expected with this make-it-up-as-you-go approach. It doesn’t matter whether I like it or not. It’s there as a witness to the impermanence of human time.
As always, I’ve used a variety of silk and cotton threads in different weights, from chunky boucle yarns to very fine silk. Life’s rich tapestry, and all that.
The earliest days of January feel quite far away now, but they’re not so distant in the great scheme of things. We’re now as far from early January as we are from the end of February, which is probably a sobering thought. By that time, one-sixth of the year will be behind us.
Time is always running faster than I am. It’s not so much a question of trying to catch up, it’s more an acceptance of the fact that there probably isn’t enough time to do everything I want to do. Tasks take longer as you get older, I find.
Today’s block is a spiral, couched in cotton perle 8 thread.
I always think of time as a spiral, with us travelling from the outer circles towards the centre throughout our lives. I think that’s why time seems interminable when you’re a child, and why it seems to speed up as you get older. It doesn’t, it’s just that the circular paths are a little shorter every year.
As far as the daily stitching is concerned, time is a long strip of linen. February, and the rest of the year, are ahead.
For anyone who has been disappointed by the news that my Facebook group (Stitching Life Community) will be closing shortly, there has been a surprise reprieve. Shannon has developed a new group for hand stitchers (daily stitching and more): Our Daily Thread. What a perfectly brilliant name for a hand stitching group (I wish I’d thought of it!) It’s a fabulous way to keep our lovely community together so you can continue to connect and share your wonderful work.
And a postscript for any new subscribers – three blog posts in one week is not my usual standard. Normal services (once a week, if that) will now be resumed.
Wishing everyone a lovely weekend.
Blue Monday
The third Monday in January (2025) is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. It’s nonsense, of course (though I guess some of you in the US may not be in agreement right now…) The concept apparently was invented by a travel company in 2005, to sell more holidays, and only applies to the northern hemisphere because of the cold weather and the short daylight hours here. As you know, I love the winter and the chilly, grey, short days. I also like January, blue, and Mondays, so I’m just here today to disprove the theory. I hope you haven’t fallen for the marketing/sales hype that’s trying to persuade you to feel miserable today. You might want to look away at this point if you don’t like blue, though.
Today’s daily stitching had to be blue, if only to justify the title of this post.
And a closer look:
Recently I’ve been gathering together some little zero waste samples that I put together last year. These are just tiny scraps of fabric laid on a foundation, covered in a sheer fabric, and randomly (or purposefully) stitched. I thought it might be nice to compile them into a mixed media sketchbook. More on this later.
I’m doing zero waste with collage papers too, using all the tiny scraps and strips of painted papers, letting the stitched samples and collage elements begin a little conversation.
It’s all very intuitive and kinaesthetic. The hands start doing something with fabric or thread or paper, and the brain eventually gets interested enough to join in. You have to start doing the work in order to do the work.
There are a few more basted samples that need stitching.
And a box of glorious blue threads vying for attention.
So when I say ‘wishing you a Blue Monday’, I mean it in the happiest way possible.
On tension
Not the everyday stress kind, but the tension in stitching. I’ve had a few messages recently from stitchers asking what kind of hoop or embroidery frame I use. If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know that I hardly ever use one at all.
I have a variety of frames, from the tubular/modular plastic kind to the traditional round wooden hoops, and I don’t get on with any of them well enough to use them regularly. I also don’t do ‘proper’ formal embroidery very often, the kind that needs stretching and framing. If I did, then I’d have to learn to stitch in a hoop more consistently.
If I do have to use a hoop, I prefer square/rectangular frames like these by Nurge (no affiliation, I just like them):
I prefer these because I never understand why most embroidery hoops are circular when the grain of fabric is square. With a round hoop, there’s always a danger of overstretching the bias into the frame and distorting the fabric.
Here are some of the reasons I don’t like using a hoop, and these of course are my personal preferences, not in any way an instruction not to use a hoop. Most stitchers seem to like them.
- I don’t like the way you can only see a little section of the work when using a hoop. I like to see the bigger picture throughout. I find it hard to stay connected to the whole cloth when I can only see and handle a bit of it at a time
- I don’t like the way the fabric is stretched taut (and I know you don’t have to have it drum tight). I prefer to feel the weight of the cloth in my hands as I stitch
- I don’t like the way the edge of the frame crushes previous stitches when you move on to another area. If you’re working on something very textural or layered, it’s sometimes too bulky to fit in the hoop comfortably
- Unless you have a hands-free frame on a stand (and they come with their own separate issues, in my experience), you have to reserve one hand for holding the frame and it becomes cumbersome
- You can’t easily see what’s happening on the back of the work without turning the whole thing upside down
For informal embroidery, or general hand stitching like the daily stitch journal, I find it’s very easy to manage the tension without a hoop. Half the battle is having the right fabric: if your fabric is too lightweight or slippery, then (probably) hello Mr and Mrs Pucker. But then sometimes you might enjoy that effect, where the stitches pull slightly too tight and cause undulating ripples across the surface. If you’re working on medium weight cotton or linen, then it’s fairly easy to maintain an even tension.
Circles are probably the trickiest thing to stitch without a hoop, because it’s very easy to pull the thread fractionally too tight, and that will cause puckering. General good practice is to support the work on a table (sit upright, it’s good for your posture) so that you can hold the bit you’re working on as if your hands were the hoop. The rest of the cloth just relaxes on the table.
If you work slowly, you can check as you go that the fabric isn’t pulling under the stitches. You can use a thumb to press each stitch into the cloth, which also helps to check the tension. I sometimes get irate messages on Instagram saying ‘get your thumb out of the way, I can’t see the stitch’. The thumb is an essential piece of equipment if you don’t use a hoop. With practice, you can feel when the tension is right.
There’s a section on managing the tension in my Intuitive Daily Stitching course, which might be helpful to beginners.
So there we are. How many of you prefer to use a hoop?
December 2024
The last day of December and the 2024 stitch journal is complete. A map of my year.
366 days, 366 blocks, a few simple stitches marking the passing of each day.
Days of different shapes and sizes, different colours and textures. Minutes, hours, and days that fill a life.
This is what I mean by Stitching Life. It’s verb, noun, not adjective, noun. Stitching my life, to be more precise.
Every month seems to pass in a blur, however much you try to slow it down. December has been no different.
I like the way this cloth displays its memories in a non-linear sequence. Because of the way I laid out the monthly blocks, the month directly above December is May, and I like the way memories of the summer sit next to the winter days. November sits underneath June, early winter sharing an improbable border with midsummer. But the flowers of summer became seeds that sleep in the winter earth, ready to wake up and grow again in the spring.
I guess stitches are seeds too.
The stitched area measures about 31″ square. The fabric is the French cotton/linen bed sheet that I used last year and the year before. Next year (tomorrow!) will be the last of it.
Its function is to be a visual depiction of time passing. It’s also a mini-reference library, showing the effects you can create with a small range of very simple stitches.
It will rest in the cover that I made for it earlier in the year.
It feels right to put the year away like this, on New Year’s Eve.
Ready to continue tomorrow.
Not starting again, just continuing. That’s what we do every day, all our lives.
Next year will be long and thin, only because that’s the shape and size of the last strip of bed sheet. If you want to try something similar, there’s a stitch journal FAQ page here on my blog. There’s also my Intuitive Daily Stitching course with instructions on how to work and combine a range of simple but effective stitches. I also show you how to choose suitable fabrics, threads and needles for your daily stitching. The course is prerecorded so you can learn at your own pace, and comes with lifetime access so you can watch as many times as you like. You can find my daily stitching templates here, or of course you can design your own.
Tomorrow, we go on. Wishing you a happy and peaceful 2025.
Quietly productive
It was supposed to be down time, and it very nearly/probably was. The trouble is, I don’t like piles of half-finished things all over the place and I can’t sit down and relax if things need doing. And things always need doing, right?
I finished the simple quilt for the reading chair (you can see the making of the seaside-Mondrian cushion/pillow here):
I made a planner for 2025, using up some 150 gsm cheap drawing paper that I had on the shelf. Usually I buy a diary for planning the year, and usually I’m too busy to use it effectively. I figured if I invest time in making the thing myself then surely I will make the effort to actually plan things in it.
I made a start:
I made a start on forming some resolutions for 2025:
Yes, 2025 will be the Year of Less. I work too many hours. No real time off this year, no holiday – too busy doing essential improvement works on the house. My choice, and not complaining. But next year has to be different. I probably say this every year. Let’s see what happens.
Of course I made a cover for the new planner:
I made a cover for my 2025 order book too:
It has pockets on the inner covers because who doesn’t like pockets?
I used a bit of an old window envelope as a pocket too:
I hemmed my 2025 stitch journal fabric:
I didn’t quite get round to finishing the little landscapes:
I am not Superwoman.
This is my last post before Christmas week, and I really will be having some proper time off over the next week and a bit. I’ll be back here on New Year’s Eve with (I hope) my finished 2024 daily stitching.
For now I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has supported my work this year, especially to everyone who has bought courses, thread, fabric, and PDFs – you make it possible for me to do what I love, and I’m always grateful for that – and to everyone who takes the time to leave kind comments here and elsewhere. I wish you all the joy and peace of the season.
Daily Stitching Templates for 2025
It took some doing, but my templates for next year’s daily stitching will fit together widthways and lengthways, so there’s a fair bit of choice about the format.
You can see I made a sample to see how it might look. Artist’s impression, I guess you might call it. I made some slight tweaks to the template after stitching the sample so this is not exactly the same as what’s in the PDF. The divisions between the daily sections are mostly whipped running stitch but backstitch or couched yarns would be effective too.
The monthly template has wavy edges that tessellate in all directions, so you can do separate monthly blocks, or join the monthly templates lengthways or widthways to make a long strip, or you could go for a large whole-cloth approach (as I’ve done with the 2024 template) by fitting the monthly templates together as a 3 by 4 block. If you want to make each month as a standalone block and turn it into a cloth book, there are brief directions for that here.
I’m looking forward to starting it. I like the fact that it’s a grid and all the days touch each other, but there are no straight lines. If you want to join me and stitch along, you can find the templates here. I’m going back to the long thin format next year, I think, mainly because I only have a long narrow strip of my vintage linen left. It’s lasted well; I’ve managed to get four years of stitching out of a single sheet. I like the way a long cloth suggests a long period of time, although the speed at which years are passing, a year doesn’t seem that long to me any more.
Incidentally, a few people have got in touch to say they’re using the 2024 template for next year but they’re not sure what to do with February. 2024 was a leap year, so the February page has 29 sections. The easiest way round it is to choose any two daily sections and merge them to make 28. Or you could stitch two sections one day, or redraw some of the dividing lines and adjust it that way. Plenty of scope to get creative with problem-solving.
But first, of course, we have the rest of December to enjoy. I’m looking forward to taking some time off once the shop closes for fabric and thread orders tomorrow (the shop will remain open for PDFs, which will continue to be available throughout the holiday period).
November 2024
Another month.
Days crammed and jostling cheek by jowl, gone almost before they started.
In the chaos of our kitchen refurbishment, a little quiet stitching turned out to be a happy oasis of calm each day.
As always, I’ve used mostly my own hand-dyed threads. If you want something similar, threads are available here until 6th December. The shop will re-open in January. I really like the random colour changes and subtle variations you get with hand-dyes. It makes any kind of stitching look more impressive than it really is.
The orange/red/green scroll stitch section below is in a Stef Francis variegated silk thread and is one of my favourite threads.
The other side is almost as chaotic as our kitchen.
I can see all the Embroiderers Guild members throwing up their hands in horror. There are knots! There are thread floats! It’s such a mess! Well, some of us are a mess underneath our calm exterior, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I have no qualms at all about the back of the work, and I don’t try to make the back tidy. I let it be what it is, and I love its honesty. There is nothing hidden, nothing covered up, and nothing to be afraid of. You can see it for what it is.
The kitchen still isn’t finished, but there’s just the painting and the flooring to do, and hooray for that.
There’s a December-shaped gap on the stitch journal, ready for a few more tomorrows.
If you’ve been thinking about starting something similar next year and want some tips on getting started, there is currently 25% off my online courses here. Use code BF2024 at the checkout; offer ends 5th December, so be quick. Courses are all prerecorded so you can start whenever you like and access the material as long as you want.
And here’s a little preview of next year’s templates, available from early December:
Looking forward to next year already.
October
I say it every month but even with the extra hour from putting our clocks back last weekend, time is still flying by so quickly. It’s unstoppable, of course. Time is all we have, and it keeps on rolling. And time is what I’m trying to illustrate here. A map of time, moments in days, days in a life.
Today is Samhain, in the traditional pagan calendar the beginning of winter. The days are already short, and the nights are already dark. Some say the veil between the worlds is thinner today.
I know a lot of people don’t enjoy the dark days and nights, but I’ll take hats and scarves and boots over shorts and sandals any day. There’s a lot to look forward to: cosy evenings with good books, lamps and candles, warm quilts to wrap around chilly knees, hot soup, and (even better) hot chocolate. I sometimes wonder if the season of our birth somehow becomes our favourite time of year. Maybe having a winter birthday means I enjoy this time of year more than summer.
So far there have been falling leaves and blue-grey skies, and more to come.
As usual, keeping it simple. Little stitches marking the passage of time.
I don’t often use backstitch – I find it a bit finicky – but I do like this one, worked in a space-dyed silk perle 8 thread:
I like the other side even better. The other side of back-stitch is split stitch:
There isn’t much left of this year:
I’m starting to think about next year’s template, of course. I only have enough of this lovely vintage linen for one more year. My remaining piece measures about 5 feet by about 3 feet, and I’m thinking about whether to make another large cloth, this time in a 3 x 4 formation, or whether to cut and join strips of it to make a long cloth.
What I’ve enjoyed most about this year’s template is the variety. I really like the way every day is a different size and shape, as they often are in reality, and the way the days fit so seamlessly together, also as they do in real life.
I’m finding myself repeatedly drawing a kind of wavy grid in my sketchbook work lately, and I’m thinking I might base my new template on something like that. The grid pattern makes me think of an enlarged photo showing the weave of a piece of gauzy fabric, like cheesecloth or scrim.
It’s very much a work in progress.
At some point I will be ready for 2025, but not just yet.