Slow Sunday Stitching - Quilt Retreat #1

Welcome to the weekly online gathering of the hand stitchers! You are welcome to make your favourite beverage, get out your stitching, and see what everyone is working on this week.

I recently attended a quilt retreat and you know what that means?!? To me it means tons of inspiration, too much delicious food, soothing conversations with friends, and lots of time to start and complete stitching projects!

This week I plan to write a couple of blog posts about the retreat, but today I will focus on the hand stitching that was enjoyed. Sandy does beautiful hand work and I will show two of her projects. The first is a Kathy Schmitz embroidery pattern that Sandy stitched using a valdani variegated thread. She made it into a wallhanging and it was gorgeous!

Sandy was working on her fabulous yo yo quilt from Kim Diehl's book Simple Graces. Everyone was drooling over this project and talking about starting their own yoyo collection. 

Some of the retreaters bought the Clover Yo Yo maker and believed Sandy when she said "it's so easy"! Well, the instructions might as well have been written in another language because I couldn't make any sense of them! My first attempt was dismal and discouraging, but I will might keep at it! 

I started a couple new projects, and here is one of them - a Mill Hill Christmas ornament kit from 2022. It is a small project with cross stitch and beading and I enjoyed getting this started. I had planned to make an ornament each month this year, but January is already over and February is coming to a close, so my new realistic goal is to make an ornament every other month!

I also did lots of hand stitching on quilt bindings. I brought 3 quilts to finish, and only 1 got completed, but I have continued on while watching the olympics and hope to finish another one today. It was wonderful when the sun came out (mostly it was foggy and icy weather) and I enjoy catching some rays!

I'll write more about the retreat this week, but that's the hand stitching update for today. Please link your blog post below and share your update with us!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly Slow Sunday Stitching party where we celebrate the wonderful world of hand stitching! It's time to take a deep breath, pick up your needle and threads, and put some stitches into your hand stitching projects while you enjoy some relaxing moments.

I have enjoyed a wonderful week of watching the olympics and stitching. I am playing a little game with myself to put in a certain number of hand stitches into a project for every medal that Canada wins. We now have 3 silver (100 x 3) and 5 bronze (50 x 5) medals, for a total of 550 stitches. 

I'm also stitching with #thenaptimestitcher using the categories she created for what kind of project to stitch every day. This is my Canadian Sampler by Erin Elizabeth Designs and it has received many more stitches while cheering for the Canadian athletes this week. 

Are you stitching along while watching the olympics? What country are you cheering for during the games? Please link up your blog post below and share your slow stitching with us!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! I'm am so happy that January is over - it felt like a slog! According to our news, the region I live in had twice the average amount of snow fall in January alone at 89 cm (almost 3 feet). That fell on top of the snow from last year to give us 206 cm so far.

I have been trying to stay warm, stitching and drinking herbal teas, and planning for my quilt retreat later in the month. The excitement and anticipation is keeping me motivated to get projects organized to move closer to completion. 

I posted a video on my youtube channel about the progress I made on projects in January and hope you have a chance to see that sometime. 

I finally completed two stitched miniatures that I really wanted to hang in my office. The first one was stitched last year and finished in time for Valentine's Day. This is a free pattern on the Silver Creek Samplers website.

And the second one I started and finished in January to celebrate Martin Luther King Day.

This is also a free pattern available to download at  Works by ABC.

Both of these finishes are appropriate for every day!

I am a big fan of the olympics and will enjoy watching it everyday for the next 2 weeks. I am stitching while I watch the events using Katie the Nap Time Stitcher's game. You can find the outline on her instagram channel   @thenaptimestitcher. I have chosen one project to stitch on for each of the daily prompts. (You can also learn more about it on the video I posted on youtube.)

So that's what I'm up to with hand stitching. I'm also starting the Super Bowl mystery quilt from Scrapdash today. There are so many fun things to participate in and I am here for it!!

What are you hand stitching today? Are you a fan of the olympics and/or the super bowl?! Share your blog post with us below!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the hand stitching party where we celebrate all types of hand work, and enjoy seeing beautiful projects being created by hands around the world. 

February is International Embroidery Month, which was apparently started in 1992, so this is a special time for anyone who enjoys embroidery. I have done a lot of embroidery in the past, but have become more obsessed with cross stitch for the last little while. It's interesting how various types of stitching bring us more enjoyment at different stages of our lives, isn't it!?!

I would like to get back to my Woven Wreaths project by Kathy Schmitz. I "lost" this project for a while but it reappeared this year and I'm ready to enjoy it again! This is the February block and it is completed, so  I plan to start on the March block this month.

I did complete  my January Sampler (pattern by Chris the Camping Stitcher). It was finished late last night so just under the wire for a January finish. (This is a terrible photo and I will replace it as soon as I can get a better one.) The folklore goes that if you start and complete a "Blessings Sampler" in January it brings blessings to your needlework for the year. I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I enjoy the tradition of stitching one every year. I will finish it into a little wallhanging this week.

What are you hand stitching this week? Did you have any January finishes? Please link up your blogpost below and share your progress with us.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! It's hard to believe it's already the last link up for January, but the sooner the winter passes here, the better! 

We have already had a full winter of snowy weather and ice cold temperatures here, and today we are getting up to 20 centimetres more snow. I sent this photo to my friend (whose car I borrowed to enable me to go car shopping). It was taken at the Staples parking lot - the snow banks are twice as tall as me in some places! Next week we'll see what the groundhog forecasts for us in terms of how much longer this brutal winter might last. 

This week I finished this little piece of stitching into a miniature wallhanging. It is still a free pattern to download from Silver Creek Samplers if you would like to make it. I finished the cross stitch last year, but wanted it to be completely finished and hanging on the wall to enjoy in February. 

Finished size = 5.75" x 5.75"
Here are the little hanging sleeves I made for the back of 2 mini finishes. They are tiny, but are just big enough to tuck in under the binding and be able to use a wooden skewer to hang it on one nail.

It's hard for me to describe or understand how stitching these little projects make me so ridiculously happy! It just brings a little joy and brightness into my world. And that's a good enough reason to be obsessed with them, I guess! While it snows today I will finish another little one to share with you next week.

This is your reminder to slow down and enjoy today! Pick up your stitching and enjoy the benefits of creating and relaxing! We hope you will link up your blog post below and share your progress with us.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

Don't stand too close to me at the party though because I've been sick with the annual winter virus with inflammation in the nose, throat and lungs. A new game we've played since 2020 is called "guess what I'm sick with"! Who knows if it's covid, influenza, a head cold with a sinus infection or perhaps pneumonia? It feels similar to when I had covid, even though I had the vaccine in November, and the covid test was negative, so it's anyone's guess. Perhaps it doesn't really matter since I haven't left the house since Tuesday, so I haven't spread my nasty germs to others. 

I have spent the time in bed hand stitching the bindings on two baby quilts. They have kept me  company while resting, drinking tea, watching flosstube, and taking tylenol.

Each baby quilt has a different design which I will show in a post next week (once the parents have received them). And I quilted them differently. One quilt has a free motion quilting design and one has a straight line grid.  But they both have the same backing fabric which is one of my favourite prints of all time - Tula Pink's Fairy Dust.

Here is a photo of my preferred tools for stitching a binding. I like the Clover black gold applique needles. The dark colour makes them easy to find in my needle book, they are sharp and narrow for easy piercing of the fabric. They are a bit challenging to thread because the eye is small, but not small enough to deter me from using these needles. And of course my favourite Aurifil thread 50 wt, a pair of snips, and a sturdy thimble.

I hope you all are well and able to get some stitches into your projects this week. Please link up your blog post below and share your slow stitching with us.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

It's Sunday! And you know what that means - it's time for rest, relaxation, recuperation, and renewal. Relaxation doesn't happen by reading about it, thinking about it, or hoping for it. It only happens by doing it! And what better way to relax than to do some hand stitching?!?

I really need some stitching time today since all my free time lately has been spent in the world of car shopping, which has been stressful. So today I plan to relax with needle in hand and will try not to think about the car situation until Monday. 

A show that I found on youtube that helped me with distraction this week is called "Game of Wool". Have you heard of it? I searched around on Youtube and was able to find all of the episodes. You may be able to watch the first couple of hours here. It was very inspiring and made me think that maybe I could knit a sweater or a hat?!? It inspired me to start a knitting project so I bought this yarn from Galt House of Yarn. I have never knit a hat before, but today I fancy myself to be a knitter extraordinare!!  🤣🤣🤣

And in cross stitch world, I made some progress  this week on the Festive Mandala from Vani at Thread the Needle Designs. It is very relaxing and I can get lost in the stitching, so it is a perfect choice for today.  

I like this photo I took when I was stitching on my mandala while watching Vani's flosstube video. You can see the photo of her finished project in the background. She always reminds me that contentment and relaxation is found in the process of stitching, not the end result. She stitches enormous projects with thousands of stitches and although she likes to set goals to achieve, it's just about moving forward and stitching what makes you happy!

I hope you are doing that today - stitching whatever brings you joy and helps you to relax. Pick up your needle and threads/yarn and put in some stitches. And then link up your blog post to share what you are relaxing with today.

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