I think summer is the ideal time to begin new hand-stitching projects. It’s too beautiful outside to be sitting at the sewing machine all day. Instead it’s time to sit on the porch, or in the grass, and soak up the sun. If you’re like me, though, you also need something creative to work on in order to be truly happy.
That’s where hand-stitching projects come in. Portable projects you can put into a bag and take with you wherever you go are the perfect little boost of creativity while you’re out enjoying the season.
The summer has just begun, but I’ve already got two hand-stitching projects going. I thought I’d share them with you, and maybe you can recommend some that you’re working on. Because I’m gonna need more, you know.
First up, is this little bird. You’ll recognize him, I’ll bet. He’s an Ann Wood signature bird. Ann told me in the podcast interview which aired on Monday that she’s made thousands of these “odd little birds” (that’s how she refers to them) and now, for the first time, we can make them, too. Ann’s beginning to release PDF patterns and the bird is her first.
There’s a tiny bit of machine stitching – just one seam – but the rest is all done by hand. You can easily stitch that seam while you’re cutting and prepping the fabric, then take the rest outside for hand-stitching fun. This guy was a joy to make.
And my other project is this Dropcloth embroidery sampler by Rebecca Rinquist. I ordered it the other day and started stitching as soon as it arrived. Rebecca sends you a pre-printed rectangle with the most lovely sampler drawn on it. Rebecca has a Creative Bug class on this very sampler where she demonstrates each stitch. So good. I’m excited to learn some new-to-me stitches while I work on this.
As a treat to myself, I got some Sublime Stitching floss to use, too. I heard an interview recently with Jenny Hart in which she described embroidery as “frosting a drawing.” Isn’t that perfect? It’s great to order things from really expert indie businesses from time to time because you get to see how they fashion the customer experience. I love this post-it note that came on with my Sublime Stitching order.
So that’s my menu of summer hand-work. I know there are other really good projects that would be perfect for porch sitting. Got one to recommend? What are you going to be working on this summer?
My big hand stitching project right now is an English paper pieced quilt. I’ve been churning out hexagon flowers, and pretty soon I’m going to start on the center medallion, which is made up of 60-degree diamonds and hexagons and equilateral triangles. (I found triangle graph paper at Incompetech, which made it much simpler to design the center part. And I’ve given up on the idea of pieceing the entire thing and am just going to applique it all to a background fabric in the interest of finishing it sometime in this lifetime. All those billions and billions of backgound hexagons would have broken me.) I also want to get back to working on my TAST samplers (Take A Stitch Tuesday at Pintangle — every week it’s a new embroidery stitch. They’re up to about 150-ish now, I think, but I started at the beginning a while back and am not all that far along yet. I’m planning to eventually make a fabric book with the samplers — I’ve seen some beautiful ones in the TAST Flickr pool. And I have a few embroidery projects in progress that I’d like to finish over the summer as well, particularly the Dala horse from Stitched Blooms and a big spiral thing I started last summer on some faded green cotton satteen that I scavenged from an Army fatigue shirt.
You’ve got such an amazing array of hand-stitching projects, Daisy! That’s so great. I love EPP, too. I’m going to take a look at TAST. Thank you for the recommendation.
I am completely addicted to hand appliqué these days. I’d dabbled with it before, but Carolyn Friedlander’s Alturas pattern got me hooked! One block at a time. It’s repetitive, but I am totally okay with that. And all my blocks are different fabrics, so I don’t get bored.
Oh, I want to check out that pattern. I could definitely see hand applique being something I would love.