Slow Sunday Stitching

Hello and welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! You are welcome to join us as a full on participant/party animal or a wallflower/observer. We are happy you are here!

This has been a very full stitching week as I am participating in "May Maynia" which just means starting lots of things and making yourself crazy happy! My plan is to start a new project every week in May. This week's start is a Tiny Modernist design called Midnight Ocean. It is a lovely underwater scene with a whale, jellyfish, coral and tiny little fish.

I am using 4 colours of Cottage Garden threads from Australia and really enjoying them. It is fun to experiment with new products. I like the creative packaging and how easy it is to use the threads and keep them organized. I did not like the price ($48 for 4 threads!) but it was a special treat I bought for myself. We all need treats from time to time!

A treat that Mother Nature has given me is a robin's nest outside my window. It's in a bit of a precarious cedar tree and I am very worried that a squirrel will get them. I just hope this Mother is an experienced nest builder and that the branch will hold the nest safely until the babies can fly away on their own.  I have literally spent hours watching the nest and am amazed at the time the mother bird spends getting worms and feeding the babies.

And speaking of mothers, Happy Mother's Day to all who are celebrating today! Whether you mother the furries, the feathered, the friends, the human children, the community, or the earth... thank you for all your nurturing efforts! I am very thankful for the loving support I have received from the stitching community. Truly it has helped to sustain me through many hard times over the years 💖

I posted yesterday about a quilting finish that I am very proud of - click here to see that post if you missed it.  And today I'll be putting a binding on another quilt so I will have some binding to enjoy in between family time.

What are you hand stitching today? Please share your slow progress with us!

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A finished quilt!

It's not very often I get to celebrate a finished quilt since I have so many projects in various stages of completion. But today I have a special finish to share!

This is one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts called Chilhowie started in November of 2022. It was during the throws of covid lockdowns when this project was started and I did not want to shop for any of the fabrics. So I used scraps from my stash and sorted them by value (not colour).

I finished my quilt top in September 2023 and then it sat in my UFO closet. My friends Annie and Lynn finished their quilts and donated them to my guild's community comfort project and they are gorgeous quilts.  Annie made her quilt the size that the original pattern was with 16 blocks, and Lynn made hers a bit smaller with 12 blocks. My version is even smaller using 9 blocks, and the finished size is 59" x 59".

It's always amazing how quilts can be made from the same pattern and yet look so different!

This is a photo of one of the blocks in my quilt. The predominant red fabric is an old Kaffe Fassett fabric called Millifiore and I barely had enough of it to finish the 9 blocks and have a bit left for the corner pieces and some of the binding. You can see how scrappy the blocks are! When I was sewing the blocks together I called it "the hot mess express" wondering if this was even worth the effort to sew! But it magically turned out to be a great scrap quilt!

My quilt top was donated to the guild and was quilted by Becky Fiedler on her domestic machine using a fun swirly design. Can you see the quilted circles and the texture it has on the back of the quilt? So fun!

Then I happily received the quilt back to put the binding on and I had the opportunity to revisit the wonderful variety of scraps in this quilt as I stitched on by. Those border blocks used up sooo many scraps!

Can you see the variety of reds in the binding? It was such a pleasure to use up so many scraps and to see this quilt to the finish line! It has inspired me to move more projects toward completion before I start the guild's summer mystery project (and maybe I should finish last summer's mystery first?!?!) 😜

Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the hand stitching party! And I remembered to be here on time today! I'm so sorry about last week - nothing like hosting a party and forgetting to show up!! 

My excuse is that I was attending Stitch North which is a stitching event held in Brampton, Ontario, Canada and hosted by Evertote. It is  attended by 225 amazing hand stitchers from all over the world. I was at weekend #1 and there are actually enough attendees to run 2 weekends! At my table we had stitchers from South Dakota and Wisconsin, and at the table beside us there were stitchers from the east and west coast of Canada AND someone from Austria! It was exhilarating, overwhelming, and creatively mind blowing! If you want to hear more about it, you can watch the video I posted this week.

One of the exciting things for me was finishing a project I started last year at Stitch North 2025. The pattern is called Serenity and is by Pansy Patch Quilts and Stitchery This photo is a little washed out, but it shows the overall design well.

I loved every minute of stitching this project and felt so much serenity every time I worked on it! It is stitched on 18 count Roxy Floss aida fabric called "speculaas" (using 1 strand of thread).

The alphabet was delightful to stitch - who knew I liked stitching letters?!? It made me want to start more samplers!  I loved the fancy scissors, and the bobbins, and oh the fancy lady's big dress with scissors and threads coming out of her pockets! 

And the saying on it is so true... that is all I need is serenity, peace... and stitching of course!

Sometimes when we stitch on so many large projects we forget the joy of a finish!

Finished size: 7.5" x 6.25"

I also finished the binding on a quilt this week and will post about that tomorrow. Very exciting!

Are you having any finishes? Please share them with us... and all the projects that you are working on even if they are not close to a finish!

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Late Slow Sunday Stitching

 Oh. my. goodness. I am late to the party! 

Because I was at another party! 

I'm so sorry everyone, but seriously I forgot it was Sunday. And I was so excited about attending Stitch North that I did not write a scheduled post. WOW! 

There will be more to come about my adventure, but for now... here is the link up!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to Slow Sunday Stitching where we celebrate the art of creating things with our hands. All forms of hand stitching activities are welcome here :)

This week I finished the February Primrose Cottage pattern (called Sweetly Sayin') into a little pillow. The pretty backing fabric is from my daughter's husband's grandmother's stash. I was given a few boxes of her stash and have been using pieces here and there as I can. The stuffing is polyfil.

This was stitched on Roxy Powderpuff 18 count aida fabric with the called for threads. This is not a good photo since it has been such dark and dreary weather here. But trust me - it is so sweet and perfect for next Valentine's Day.  Finished size: 5.5" x 4"

I have also been stitching almost daily on the Quick Quaker stitch-a-long from Modern Folk Embroidery. I am using a variety of green threads that we are started to enjoy at the beginning of spring. 

The daily videos that Jacob posts are educational and inspiring. One of my favourites so far was when he sang "How can I keep from singing" on Day 10's video. If you go to the 17 minute mark on the video, you can hear him sing this beautiful old hymn of the quakers and he sings all the harmony parts himself! I'll probably listen to it again this morning as I stitch another part of this lovely pattern.

What are you hand stitching today? Do you listen to music as you stitch your projects?  LInk up your blog post below and share what you are working on.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!  Take a few moments to set aside your machines, your devices and screens, and just take a deep breath... ahhh... so much better. Now pick up your needles and fibres, and put a few stitches into your project. You will feel better in no time!

I am looking forward to this afternoon - to putting my feet up, and stitching the day away while I watch the Masters Golf Tournament. I am not a golfer, but I do enjoy the peaceful nature of the Augusta competition, seeing the beautiful green grass and flowers, while spending time stitching. It reminds me that spring is coming soon.

Today I will enjoy stitching more of the Quick Quaker SAL (by Modern Folk Embroidery) in green threads on a tea dyed 18 count aida. Mother Nature puts all the greens on display in the spring and I'm putting them all into this project - the yellowy greens, the blue greens, the olive greens, the forest greens... all of them! 

And when I'm caught up with this project, I'll start working on binding the four quilts I picked up from Claudia the long arm quilter at Quilting By Design.

What are you hand stitching today? Are you watching golf today while you stitch?

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly celebration of the art of slowly stitching by hand! We encourage you to slow down, breathe deeply, take a few stitches, and enjoy seeing the slowly created projects of hand stitching gurus from around the world. 

There have been 2 major hand stitching projects for me this week. First, because it is Easter (sending Happy Easter wishes for those who celebrate) I pushed myself to finish an ornament of an Easter Egg. 

It was tricky to construct and I used glue (for the first time) to stick the stitched piece to cardboard. Then I cut an egg from a lovely blue fabric for the back, put a piece of batting on each side of the cardboard and glued the two sides together (with a ribbon in the middle so it can hang). Then I hand stitched the two sides together around the edge.

The design is called Easter (Stitch Craft by Mary) and the pattern showed a pink colourway. I changed mine to blue and spent a long (happy) time digging around in my thread collection to find 6 blues from light to dark. It was so delightful to stitch, and because of the design construction and not needing to count much, I made no mistakes at all (very rare)!

The finished size is 3.5" x 4.5" and I am so happy how it turned out. It has 1,985 cross stitches and a few backstitches (which I thought brought some life to the butterfly and the lilies of the valley). And it is finished in time for the Easter Bunny to deliver it!

My second project is for the month of April and is a pattern called "Quick Quaker" by Modern Folk Embroidery. It is a stitch-a-long on instagram and each day you stitch some of the pattern and post your progress (if you want).

I am using a variety of green threads on a tea dyed 18 count aida cloth. The symbolism is the return of green in the spring (all greens go together in nature) and everything growing out of the ground/dirt/brown. I have no idea how it will turn out, or if I will like the end result of my colour choices, but it is very fun everyday to pick a new green and put approximately 150 stitches in. And Jacob from Modern Folk Embroidery is posting a video every day of the SAL.

So that is what I have been up to this week. How about you? Please link up your blog post below and share your projects with us!

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