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

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:

lifetime (cross stitches) piling up – 🎶 earworm by Talking Heads, ‘Lifetime Piling Up’

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.

stitch on the left, painting and collage on the right

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.

zero waste samples using selvedges and hand-dyed scraps

about 8″ square, layered scraps and sheer fabrics, ready for stitching

And a box of glorious blue threads vying for attention.

🎶 blue, blue, electric blue 🎶 earworm by David Bowie, ‘Sound and Vision’

So when I say ‘wishing you a Blue Monday’, I mean it in the happiest way possible.

December 2024

The last day of December and the 2024 stitch journal is complete. A map of my year.

2024 stitch journal, 31″ x 30″, hand-dyed threads on vintage linen

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.

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:

October stitch journal, detail, space-dyed silk 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:

Stitch journal, looking ahead to November and December

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.

the last piece of vintage linen and the beginnings of a plan

At some point I will be ready for 2025, but not just yet.

September

Immediately on writing today’s title I’ve given myself an Earth Wind and Fire ear worm (🎶 …ba-dee-ya, say do you remember, ba-dee-ya, dancin’ in September… 🎶) and now you have it too, I hope.

Aaanyway. It flew by, as usual.

I really like the variety of shapes on this year’s template. Originally it was meant to look like an aerial view of fields, but it’s probably turned out to be a bit too colourful for that. If anyone has restricted themselves to a brown/green palette throughout, they might be having more luck with the realism. I still like it as it is though.

I’ve used a variety of thicker yarns and threads for the borders (field boundaries, I call them) – mostly cotton and silk boucle, plus a few scraps of textured yarns that I’ve found in the threads box. For the one below, I used some viscose hollow ribbon (from Oliver Twists fibres) stuffed with yarn. It’s fairly easy to thread yarn through the hollow centre with a big blunt needle or a small safety pin. Once it’s stuffed, you can ruche the ribbon up a bit and it creates a lovely ruffled effect.

My favourite this month is probably this one, worked without any kind of plan, just meandering backstitch stems and detached chain stitch leaves, in hand-dyed silk perle 12:

The other side is a little quieter than the front, which is true for most of us, I think.

October tomorrow… and before we know it, it will be the end of another year. If you’re starting to think about (whisper it) _^Christmas there are threads available here.

I’m starting to think about next year’s template and so far am drawing a complete blank. I’ve enjoyed making the previous three, as a scroll, a cloth book, and a large cloth. I may well return to the long thin format as I really like the continuous stretch of days, long like a year, but I’ll give it some more thought.

Priority this week is to try and find someone who can fix our boiler because currently we have No Heating. Good job we have plenty of knitwear and quilts.

August

Eight months down, four to go. Each month seems to vanish faster than the last.

As always, no plan, no design. Just pick up a threaded needle and start stitching.

In the traditional Celtic calendar, autumn begins with Lammas on the 1st of August. The weather presenters will have us believe it’s still summer because it’s warm and the sun is shining. But weather is not season, and here in the UK you can see the light changing throughout August, and by the end of the month you can smell and feel autumn as well as see it.

I really like the softer muted colours that come with autumn and winter, and I’ll enjoy choosing some of them for the rest of the year.

Thread winding is still very much ongoing in preparation for the shop update some time next month, and the advantage for me is that I get to replenish some of my own threads too.

I also like to road-test them to check the quality. I’ve got a couple of new suppliers this time so I need to satisfy myself that the threads are up to it. Very happy so far.

end of August – road-testing new threads

August wouldn’t be complete without a view of the other side. The side we don’t show the world, the side we don’t choose to look at, the side that makes us what we are. Whether we like it or not, it’s there and it’s got nothing to hide. As always, I like some of these marks better from the back. One of these days I will turn the stitch journal over, stitch on the back and let the ‘wrong’ side be on show.

We’re having our bathroom renovated next week. I’m kind of dreading the upheaval, the noise, the mess, the dust, etc but very much looking forward to a long soak in a hot bath when it’s all over. I’m not sure how much the disruption will slow down the thread winding, but I’ll do my best to keep up.

July

How quickly the days pass.

There were (and still are) some hot days. Many weather forecasters in this country are jubilant every time the sun is shining as they announce the arrival of more ‘lovely’ weather. They’ve taken to describing 28 degrees (which for this part of the UK is very unusual) as ‘warm’. Only a few years ago the same temperature would have been described as ‘very hot’. There hasn’t been any rain for several weeks, which is also unusual for this part of the UK. I try to stay away from getting too overtly political here but global warming worries me, and I find this normalising of rising temperatures by the mainstream media to be particularly alarming.

I find myself uncharacteristically short of patience in hot weather; I’m not good at tolerating extreme heat and very bright sunlight. Thank goodness for autumn waiting around the corner and the return of darker nights. I caught the faintest whiff of autumn early yesterday morning, and soon the light will begin to change.

In the meantime of course I keep going, because this is life and there is joy in every day. The joy might not always be immediately visible on the surface, but it’s there nevertheless just waiting to be found.

There was a funeral this month for our friend. A day edged with sadness but filled with happy memories of an amazing woman and a talented artist. We are so lucky to have known her during her long life.

July detail – a day edged with sadness but filled with the joy of remembering

Sometimes if there’s a bit of border yarn left over I curl it around in the corner as you can see below. A kind Instagram reader commented that it looks like a Koru (I had to look it up) which symbolises harmony and eternal movement, and how lovely is that.

The other side isn’t always that neat, but then I think neat can be over-rated.

I’m immersed in the creation of video lessons at present for my new paper-pieced patchwork course. It’s slow going but I think it will be ok in the end, as most things are.

June

Just like that.

Halfway through the year already. How did that happen?

The aerial map is filling up so quickly.

June days:

I really like the way the days are such different shapes on this year’s template. It feels like life. Some days feel longer or wider than others; some days have sharp corners; some days have crossing paths. Some days feel like running just to stand still.

Some days were too hot.

Every day, as always, just choosing thread and colour, letting stitches fall wherever they land. Marking the passage of time.

Today we can see the back of June.

And tomorrow, July. Between times, the cloth lives in this cover. Part embroidery, part patchwork. If you missed it, you can read about the making of the cover here

May

The last day of May and another monthly block complete on this year’s stitch journal, marking time and witnessing the passage of days.

May always feels like quite a long month to me but they all fly by in the end.

No real plan, as always. Just threading a needle and placing a few stitches every day. Watching what happens.

Some of the stitches end up looking like footprints. Which is just what they are, really. Steps along tracks and paths that lead somewhere.

People often ask about the curly/loopy stitching around the edge of some of the blocks. It’s just silk boucle yarn couched down with a fine thread. Nice effect with very little effort.

I’m easing into a more summery palette for this middle section of the year.

As usual, I don’t always like every single block. It doesn’t matter. Each block only functions as a witness; it doesn’t have to be beautiful. We can’t undo the moments or go back in time and change the past, which is why I don’t ever unpick the stitches I don’t like. It is what it is, we acknowledge its faults, and we move on. As soon as each stitch is completed, it becomes part of the past and therefore can’t be altered. It can be very therapeutic to accept the imperfections.

The other side always interests me. In some cases I prefer it.

June is waiting for me to meet her tomorrow.

Tag: intuitive daily stitching

Blue Monday

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December 2024

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Daily Stitching Templates for 2025

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November 2024

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October

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September

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August

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July

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June

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May

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