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