intuitive daily stitching textile artist, stitching by hand, thread, embroidery, stitch journal

Pre-printed fabric for daily stitching

Some quite exciting news.

You can now buy fabric pre-printed with my Intuitive Daily Stitching templates from my print on demand stores. This is something I’ve often been asked for, and finally I’ve been able to work out a way of doing it.

Basically you will need to select the template design that you want, and then select a yard of your preferred fabric to have it printed on. The fabric is then printed especially for you and sent to you directly from the print on demand site. The set of twelve monthly templates is centred on the fabric and is designed to fit one yard, so this is the quantity you will need to purchase.

You can find the options in my Spoonflower shop and my Woven Monkey shop (Spoonflower is based in the US; Woven Monkey is here in the UK). The template files are labelled with years (2022, 2023, 2024, etc) but this is only to reflect the year in which I first stitched them. They all have 365 daily blocks, so every set of templates will work for any year. For leap years you will just need to divide any daily block in two to create the extra day.

For more information about the templates, please visit my Big Cartel shop and read the summaries for the templates you find most appealing. Broadly, they will look something like this when printed on the fabric (you will probably need to zoom in a bit to see them more clearly):

The way most of the templates are arranged on the fabric is four columns and three rows, back and forth, so the pathway through the year works like this:

The 2024 version is rather different in that it’s more of a sprawling map than a formal grid, and you may need the paper templates as well to make sense of that one.

Having the fabric printed this way means that the format of the daily stitching templates will be roughly a square on a square yard of fabric. There isn’t currently a way to print the templates as a long strip, which is what you can opt to do if you transfer the templates onto fabric yourself from my PDFs.

I’ve done daily stitching both ways, as a long strip and as a large square, and I don’t find that one is any easier or more difficult than the other. It’s the same volume of fabric, whether it’s long or square, and you only need to handle the bit you’re currently working on. But something to bear in mind if you think you might find working on a large square piece a bit unwieldy.

If you’re in the UK, my shop on Woven Monkey will be easier and cheaper in terms of postage costs; if you’re in the USA then my Spoonflower shop will probably be better for you. If you’re anywhere else in the world, please check the postage rates to your country for both sites to find the best deal.

If you’re buying the printed fabric from Woven Monkey, I would probably recommend printing the templates on their cotton drill or faux linen.

If you’re buying from Spoonflower, I would suggest their linen cotton canvas will probably give best results.

Please note that you literally just get a yard of printed fabric when you purchase this way; the daily blocks or months are not numbered or labelled, and there are no instructions. If you need the additional supporting information, you can purchase and download the accompanying PDFs here.

If you’re intending to use your completed embroidery as a functional item, you will need to wash your fabric (cool gentle machine or hand wash) before stitching as there will be some slight shrinkage.

There’s a video here showing you some of the options and how it works:

see how it works

If you have any questions about this, or there’s something I didn’t mention, please ask in the comments section below.

Have a lovely weekend.

Preparing for 2026: new Daily Stitching Templates

Halfway through November seems a bit early to be thinking about next year, but really it’s only a few weeks away. I thought now would probably be a good enough time to share my plans for 2026 daily stitching.

Next year I’m returning to the large square format, only because I happened to have a piece of vintage Metis (linen/cotton blend) that is almost exactly the right size and shape for twelve templates in a 4 x 3 configuration (4 columns, 3 rows). I’m also returning to a more linear grid, really just for a change. The last two years have been templates with irregular/wavy lines, and this year the grid lines are straight. No better or worse, just different. If you purchase the PDF, the twelve separate monthly templates are rectangular, so will tessellate either as a long strip (sideways or lengthways) or as a large square(ish) panel like mine. Or indeed as separate pages that you can join together later.

As always, the monthly templates are hand-drawn so the grid is not perfectly regular; some blocks are slightly wider or longer, and there are a few elongated or smaller blocks to accommodate the variation in the number of days in each month.

I worked a practice panel first, just to see. I’ve made it into a simple fold-over clutch bag to keep next year’s daily stitching in.

The simple grid comes with a dozen or so shapes that you can cut out and stick to card, and you can then use them to draw round. This is how I’ve made the circles, hearts, leaf, triangle, star and house shapes in the example above.

Of course you can make up your own grid and/or shapes as well, whatever has meaning for you.

Here’s the back of the clutch-bag-case-carry thing, for an idea of how it might look:

One of the reasons I’m releasing the template earlier than new year is that you might want to do the same kind of preparation that I’m doing. I’m couching decorative yarns along all the gridlines so that the spaces are ready to fill each day, either with stitching or with a shape template.

If you don’t have decorative yarns then you can work whipped running stitch, stem stitch, split stitch, back stitch – or any other kind of outlining stitch, just to mark in the lines. I’ve drawn the lines on my linen with a standard ballpoint pen, which doesn’t show once you’ve covered it with yarn or stitch.

Seeing a whole future year laid out like this is always intriguing. The days look like blank spaces, ready to be filled – some with joy, some with sorrow, others with tragedy or celebration. But of course time isn’t out there waiting for us. We are time, here and now as well as then and when, and our time is recorded on a cloth with needle and thread as it passes.

I’m really looking forward to working with this template, even though time isn’t square and time doesn’t run in straight lines. I’m thinking of each space as looking through a viewfinder, finding a detail in the bigger picture.

If you’re interested enough to follow along and stitch your own, you can buy my daily stitching templates here. You don’t have to use the 2026 template, by the way; any of the templates will work for any year – though if you use the 2024 one, you’ll need to smoosh two blocks together because that was a leap year so has an extra day. All the others will work fairly flexibly.

If you’re new to daily stitching, you might like to take a look at my Intuitive Daily Stitching online course here.

I’m looking forward to a little more happy stitching; I hope you are too.

October 2025

The end of October, and the beginning of the long dark winter nights. My favourite time of year.

As always, the time flies.

Many of the daily blocks are outlined with textured yarn – silk or cotton boucle, or cotton slub. I use mainly my own hand-dyed silk and cotton threads for the stitching.

Today’s ghostly grey stripes for Samhain (or Hallowe’en) are in fine silk. Looking at, looking between, looking beyond; sensing the veil between the worlds.

As usual, some daily blocks turned out better than others. That’s life.

None of it matters, really. This is just a visual witness to the passage of time as each day moves to the next. These are moments within the days in my life. Moments arrive and then are gone forever, the present constantly melting into the past before our very eyes.

The other side is almost as interesting.

And the end of the year is in sight:

I’ll be back later in the month with news of the templates for 2026. Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend and happy stitching.

More thread

I have given myself too much to do, as usual. It started as an experiment to see whether I could produce enough hand-dyed thread to sustain a stand at Knit and Stitch in Harrogate next year. It was an idle thought, which I have tested and unfortunately found wanting. The crucial points I hadn’t factored in are that I only have one pair of hands, and there are only twenty-four hours in a day. I haven’t completely given up on the idea, but it will involve a little more rigorous planning and pacing if it’s going to work.

Hey ho. More thread for the shop, then, in the meantime.

There’s a big pile of hanks awaiting winding into skeins:

cotton and silk thread ready for winding

There’s a growing pile of threads that have been wound into skeins and are waiting for labels:

Apologies for the light, by the way – my north-facing room doesn’t get any sun, and the view from my window is mostly trees. Definitely not complaining about any of that, but the light is decidedly blueish at my desk at this time of year.

And finally there’s a smaller pile of threads being labelled:

These are ‘spares’ that will go into Randoms, which will be in the shop (I hope) some time next month. I’m trialling a new labelling system which so far is working quite well. The swing tags get a bit cumbersome in a set of threads, and it can be fiddly to get them all to lie flat when packaging them for posting. These are smaller and flatter and I hope might work a bit better. I sourced some plastic-free sellotape so the labels and tape will be compostable.

I estimate there’s probably another hundred hours or so of winding/labelling/sorting into groups, so this will keep me busy for another couple of weeks at least.

I’ll be back at the end of the month with October’s daily stitching.

Good news

Good news if you’re in the US.

Royal Mail is now providing an international mail service that replaces the flat fee for US customers and instead charges the 10% tariff at the point of posting. What that means is that all charges and fees are paid up front before your parcel leaves the UK, leaving you nothing further to pay when your parcel is delivered. It also ensures that your parcel clears customs as smoothly as possible. Definitely no $80 fee.

Unfortunately I’ve had to increase the postage costs for US customers, to help cover the cost of the tariff as well as the administration fee that Royal Mail charges for providing the service.

There may be some delays to begin with, until the system becomes familiar and runs more smoothly, so you may want to wait a few weeks or so before placing an order – but you definitely can order again if you want to, and hurrah for that.

In other news, I’m preparing some new sheer fabric collections and have been painting some lovely chiffon and tulle fabrics.

I have some sheer silk fabrics to dye next week and then I’ll have some fun curating an inspirational collection for you.

We’re in for a wet and windy weekend here in the UK, so a comfy chair, a hot chocolate, and a good book may well be on the menu. And some quiet stitching, of course.

September 2025

Another month completed and only the last quarter of the year left.

As always, there’s no plan at all – just thread a needle and begin. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s how life is. I don’t judge the daily stitching; it is what it’s meant to be, however it turns out.

As usual, it’s mostly straight stitch and running stitch in various guises. Life is complicated enough at the moment.

There were poppies for my mother’s birthday earlier this month.

Today is a few back stitch squiggles. Two steps forward, one step back, a path that loops back on itself sometimes but still gets to where it’s headed eventually. Taking the scenic route, perhaps.

The other side is just another kind of perspective on where we’ve been.

And October tomorrow…

Onward and maybe upward. Most paths lead somewhere.

I’ll be back later this week with what I hope might be good news for those of you in the USA. 😎

August 2025

And here we are again, another month down. Time, in thread on linen.

In the old Celtic calendar, the beginning of Autumn is Lammas on 1st August, signifying first harvest (grain). Second harvest (fruit) is around the autumn equinox in mid-September, and third harvest (nuts and seeds) is the end of October, at the start of winter. There is always much exasperated hilarity in our house when the Met Office refers to ‘false autumn’ on its weather reports as the leaves are starting to fall. That’s because it’s real autumn, we cry in unison. It may be still warm and sunny, but weather is not season. You only have to look at the changes in the light, in the air, in nature itself, to see and feel the signs of early autumn. This is my usual northern hemisphere bias, of course, because this is where I live. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, you’ll be enjoying the beginning of spring.

Probably enough meteorological ranting.

You can probably see the change in the colour palette. More muted golds/browns/reds/purples.

The light isn’t great this morning in my north-facing work room. The morning sun is no longer quite reaching me – another clear sign of the turning season.

I’m enjoying the occasional ovals and cross-quarters on this year’s template.

As always, it looks far more complex than it really is. It’s mostly variations on straight stitch and running stitch, with a bit of blanket stitch, chain stitch, fly stitch and herringbone stitch thrown in. The edges of each daily section are mostly couched, usually silk boucle yarn or other textured yarns. Nothing very difficult here at all.

So on we go into September. I’m currently working on a sample to road-test the new template for 2026 – so far so good, I think, and I’m already quite excited about stitching it for real next year. The template will be available (probably) from early November; more on that later. Stay tuned 🙂

I hope you’ve enjoyed your own August daily stitching, if this is your thing. Have a lovely Sunday.

July 2025

I say it every month, but where does it go? Blink and you miss it. Time just escapes, scampering out through a door that can’t be shut.

Today is just herringbone stitch, which looks deceptively complicated (it isn’t) when worked in close rows like this:

As always, the stitching is very simple: mostly running stitch and straight stitch in various combinations.

There is a seam where I had to join two strips of linen. I like the fact that it’s visible but not too obvious. One year (not next year, that’s already planned) I will work the daily stitching on lots of patched and joined pieces.

As always, it’s a kind of map. Setting out, hoping for the best and finding a path through each day.

There is never a plan for the stitching. Choose a colour, thread a needle, and begin. See where it goes.

August ahead:

The blue thing you can see in the top left corner is the simple bag I keep it in. I made a sample of the template when I first designed it and then I stitched it to the front of a hand-dyed cotton drawstring bag.

The back has a single motif:

If you want to begin a similar daily practice, take a look at my online course here – you can watch as many times as you like, you can download the videos, and you get lifetime access (lifetime effectively means as long as I’m alive, or as long as I stay with Teachable, the platform that hosts my classes).

Happy stitching!

June 2025

Another month, taking us halfway through the year.

It’s a bit of a wobbly video, but here’s how it’s looking so far:

the year so far

Today is a few wild flowers. We don’t call them weeds in our house.

There have been some very long days, and some very hot days.

As always, a few very simple stitches to witness the days passing.

It doesn’t need to be complicated. Life is challenging enough without making extra work for yourself.

July tomorrow, and the second half of the cloth. There is a seam where I had to join two lengths, but you’ll hardly see the join once a bit of stitching covers it.

I often look at the blank month ahead and wonder what it will bring. It seems strange to think that this time next month I will know what it brought, and today’s future will become the past. Good job I have a needle and thread to anchor me into the present.

May 2025

And that was May.

May always feels like quite a long month to me, but not this year. The days continue to fly by and even though the days are getting longer here in the northern hemisphere, there never seem to be enough hours.

As always, a few stitches every day.

It’s been mostly winding/processing thread (and orders, thank you) and checking in with the various Making Zen groups and posts this month. Next month I hope to make a little time just for me.

Of course we can’t ‘make’ time. It’s all the same time. The same twenty-four hours in every day, perpetual motion as the minutes pass and the world turns.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the minutiae of daily life, and sitting with needle and thread for a few minutes every day is very calming.

I calculated that it’s 1,247 days since I started this practice. I guess that’s a lot of stitching.

I sometimes wonder where these annual stitch calendars will end up. I was half-joking when I said in my Making Zen chat with Kate that I might exhibit them when I’ve got ten years’ worth. Only another six and a half years to go, if that turns out to be a thing.

The other side is important too: the side we don’t see, the side that forms the foundation and stability for daily work. The side that shows where you went and how you got there. It doesn’t need to be tidy or neat. Beneath the surface I suspect we’re all a fairly chaotic jumble of thoughts and feelings. It’s a kind of map, I guess. I think of these things as maps of time.

Looking forward to meeting June tomorrow:

A warm welcome to all of you who are new to the blog as a result of Making Zen. Nothing much happens here, but if you enjoy a few quiet moments now and again then you’re probably in the right place. If you’re thinking of beginning your own daily stitching journey, please do take a look at my online class Intuitive Daily Stitching. Learn at your own pace, and watch as many times as you like.

And if you enjoyed my Making Zen workshop, you can take those ideas and techniques a bit further with my Stitched Samples for Sketchbooks course.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Tag: intuitive daily stitching

Pre-printed fabric for daily stitching

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Preparing for 2026: new Daily Stitching Templates

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October 2025

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More thread

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Good news

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September 2025

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August 2025

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July 2025

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June 2025

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May 2025

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