textile art textile artist, stitching by hand, thread, embroidery, stitch journal

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.

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.

June 2026 daily stitching

And here we are, halfway through the year already.

The month soon fills up.

Today was a simple leaf outline, and you can see it in action on my YouTube channel.

This month has presented difficulties and challenges, most of which are now ongoing. The best policy so far has been to keep calm and stitch.

July ahead:

And the year so far:

Amazing what a few minutes a day can do.

Quilter-couching

You probably know couching is one of my favourite techniques, and I’m currently conducting an experiment to see how effectively couching might substitute for quilting.

I don’t often get as much time as I’d like for my own work but I’ve been squeezing in an hour here and there on this little quilt that began in June 2024 as a heap of little patches that needed stitching together.

It’s hand-pieced, from lots of vintage and contemporary scraps – past and present sitting side by side, as they do in life – and most of the stitching is either couching or very simple embroidery.

The whole thing measures about a square yard or so.

The red circle is about 10 inches in diameter and began as lines of straight stitch. That didn’t give a prominent enough amount of colour, so I’ve threaded the straight stitches with a fine wool yarn.

The vertical lines are still very much in progress, and there are lots more still to do. I’m couching a fine silk bourette yarn with quilting cotton thread, and that seems to be holding the layers together pretty well. The backing is lightweight calico and the batting is Hobbs wool.

It’s all very much a work in progress. This little quilt has had many false starts and many unpickings in the two years of its construction, but I think it seems happier now and we’ll keep going until we get to wherever it is.

In other news – I’ll be taking some time out next week, so the shop will be closed temporarily for a few days while I attend to other things. Please be patient if you need to get in touch as I may not be checking emails every day.

From ‘In Which Rabbit has a busy day and We Learn What Christopher Robin Does in the Mornings’ by A. A. Milne, illustration by E. H. Shepard

May 2026 daily stitching

We’ve already got one foot in June, but here’s how May shaped up:

Thirty-one handfuls of time, caught and stitched down before they could get away.

Some of the May stitching is in my YouTube May playlist, including the little wreath for May Day:

The little tree is also on YouTube and is quite easy to stitch.

The last week in May was too hot. I am a creature of the cold and dark, and I struggle with anything above 22 degrees. Thankfully it’s a little more normal this week and we have some very welcome rain in the forecast.

We like to see the other side, right? Always.

And June is carrying us along:

It’s unstoppable. The best option is to keep going, one day at a time.

New PDFs for daily stitching

After a few weeks of very enjoyable drawing and writing, the new PDFs are out. I *think* they’re ok but let me know if you find any glaring errors and I will fire the proofreader (that’s me).

These PDFs are meant to give a little help and direction with daily stitching on the days when you hit a wall and can’t get started.

There are currently four PDFs to choose from, sixty little design sketches in each volume: Lines, Circles, Nature, and Scatter patterns, with brief stitching directions for each sketch.

Volume 3, Nature (mostly flowers and leaves)

There’s also a blank page in each volume for you to jot down your own designs, and once you get started you will find yourself coming up with many more ideas of your own.

The PDFs assume that you are familiar with, and able to execute, some basic stitch types. My online class, Intuitive Daily Stitching, goes through these stitches in some detail and suggests various ways in which you can be creative with some simple stitches. Alternatively, you can consult one of the many embroidery reference books or free online tutorials for help learning some simple stitches.

Occasionally people have trouble accessing the download, so there’s now a ‘Help with PDFs’ page in the shop header with the following diagram and instructions:

The cover photos show samples of some of the designs so that you can see how they might look in real life. Be as creative as you like with colours and thread types.

I really enjoyed putting these together, and I hope you find them helpful. Have a fabulous week.

April 2026

And that was April.

As always, nowhere near long enough.

The colour palette is starting to warm up as the days get longer and sunnier. April has been very dry so far and the garden needs rain.

Today sees the top third of my cloth full: four months of this year vanished and yet still present.

Tomorrow, onwards.

Behind the scenes

There hasn’t been much happening front of house for a couple of weeks because I’ve been busy back stage working on some new PDFs. If you subscribe to my YouTube channel, you might have seen a preview of this in my video earlier this week.

I’ve had a lot of messages and social media comments this year from daily stitchers asking for more direction on what to stitch. With over four years of daily stitching behind me, I have more than enough to share.

So I’ve spent the last few weeks developing four themed PDFs, 60 designs in each:

lines/bands/stripes

circles/spirals/swirls

flowers and foliage

little/scatter patterns

I need to work up some more samples for the front covers and find another couple of pages-worth of designs, but I think I’m nearer the end than the beginning.

I’ve had requests for a book rather than PDFs, but there’s no way I have the head space to tackle a book right now. Books can take months, often years, to get from idea to publication; I hope there will be one at some point in the future though. In the meantime PDFs are relatively simple to make, and much easier to distribute.

Also, and this has made me do the hollow gallows laugh, a couple of friends suggested the PDF thing after I’d already started quietly working on it. Responding ‘you’re never going to believe this but…’ is hardly ever convincing but I think I got away with it.

Anyway, for now – more proof-reading/editing, a little more drawing, and some quiet stitching. It’s been really enjoyable rediscovering some previous designs and working them up into samples.

I hope you’re enjoying your creative stitching too.

Have a lovely weekend.

March 2026

Here we are, on the last day of March – a quarter of the year gone already.

There was a little basket of daffodils for St David on the first day…

… some flowers for Mothering Sunday…

…a shamrock for St Patrick…

… and equal day and night at the spring equinox

We changed the clocks here in the UK at the weekend, so we lose an hour that we’ll get back in October. It baffles me why we have to do this. I know there are the all the myths and arguments about lighter evenings etc, but evenings will get lighter whether we change the clocks or not because that’s what happens in summer. Maybe the human race thinks it has some sort of mastery over time because we can arbitrarily change what the clock says. I don’t always think of myself as entirely human, by the way.

In any case, it happens whatever I think, so I’m pretending it’s 1pm even though I *know* it’s only noon. There’s a video of today’s stitching on my YouTube channel today, if you’re interested.

In other news, I’m still grappling with threads, which will be in the shop after Easter. More on that later. Another reminder that the shop will close at noon (ish) on Thursday and will re-open after the Easter bank holidays.

Hope your week is going well.

Category: textile art

September 2026 daily stitching

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August 2026 daily stitching

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July 2026 daily stitching

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June 2026 daily stitching

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Quilter-couching

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May 2026 daily stitching

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New PDFs for daily stitching

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April 2026

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Behind the scenes

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March 2026

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