Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the first weekly hand stitching party in August!  So glad you could join us today as we get out our threads and needles, and put some stitches into our favourite projects.

I finished a little project for the Colorado Stitcher's Cross stitch camp July 2025. We were encouraged to make something from our favourite designer, and I chose a Primrose Cottage project called "Hello Summer". Stitched on 18 count aida, the finished size is 3.75" x 2.5".  

The little bees are kind of lost at the top, but that's okay. I probably should have not used such a light background fabric. They did recommend a pink fabric, but I didn't have any. Oh well, I still really like how it turned out.

I made a flosstube video this week of the projects I worked on in July. If you have a chance, pop over to Youtube to see what I've been up to, and to see an old stitched piece I made in 1990!

I have been really working hard on my Extraordinary Birds SAL and in spite of that effort, I am several steps behind.  This is one of my favourite birds called a cassowary. It has been so interesting to learn about so many different birds from all over the world in this stitching project. 

There have been 10 steps posted so far, and I am currently on step 7. There will be a total of 14 steps so I will probably fall more behind. But that's okay because I am loving it! This is how it looks so far...

I do hope you are stitching on projects that you love and can't wait to spend some time with today! And please link up your blog post below and share your slow progress with us!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! We invite you to join us - we're slow, deliberate, and thoughtful folks who enjoy celebrating our love of creating with our hands.

This week I'd like to share some inspiration by Elizabeth Markevitch. I found her on instagram and have repeatedly returned to hear more of her videos. Here is the link to Elizabeth Markevitch. (She is also on youtube, threads and tiktok if you want to look her up on other platforms). She said "research shows crafting reduces anxiety and increases dopamine".  Here are a couple more of her statements that I loved:

*you are calming your nervous system.

*you are bringing order to your own chaos.

*you are not just crafting, you are coming back to who you are.

*you are reminding yourself "I can make beauty even on hard days".

YES please! I'd like to do that!

I think that is what my interest in full coverage stitching is all about. I started this in March of 2025 and it still doesn't really look like anything.This is the chaos that it currently is.

It's supposed to be Mini Treasure Hunt Bookshelf which is a 2013 design by Aimee Stewart.  It might not ever become anything before I die but in the meantime, I will calm my nervous system, bring order to the chaos, return to who I am, and maybe make something beautiful!

What are you stitching on this week? Is your hand stitching bringing order to the chaos? Share your slow progress with us!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

It's finally Sunday - a day of rest, reflection, renewal, and slow stitching! Why not join us as we get out our hand stitching projects and put in a few relaxing stitches?

I have been attending Midsummer Stitch which is a virtual event by Lindy Stitches. A whole weekend was set aside to stitch whatever I want! And what did I want to stitch? BIRDS!

First I stitched this little bird motif on "Room at the Table" by Proper Stitcher. So cute! I posted on my blog about the beginning of this project in April - click here to read more about it. I'm so close to finishing this one but wanted to work on other projects, so had to put it away for now.

Then I did finish a project! But not without some sweat and tears. 

My outside border was not matching up, and I had already done some unstitching before I took this photo. I had to unstitch everything in the circle as evidently I had made a major counting error. You can see my new bird themed stitch ripper that I used, and one of my new wooden bird needleminders. There are 3 birds are in this photo!

Stitches were removed and new ones put in the correct places, and the borders did eventually meet.

This is Modern Folk Embroidery's Quaker Medallion: Bird in a Grapevine pattern with 1,845 cross stitches. The fabric is Roxy's 18 count Porcelain. The thread is a lovely variegated DMC #4515. It was so fun to play with the blue and brown thread. I tried to get mostly dark colours in the centre bird and think it turned out well. I might put it in a hoop frame to finish it.

What are you stitching today? Anyone out there also obsessed with birds? 

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

At Slow Sunday Stitching, we like to brag about our slowness, and take pride in the art of relaxing, breathing deeply, and not really accomplishing much. We believe in the health benefits of relaxation, and take it seriously enough to commit to this slowness practice at least once a week. If you need a reminder of the benefits of relaxation, click here.

Here in S. Ontario Canada we are having yet another heat wave. This has been a very hot summer so far and I just came back from a week of camping that at times was unbearably hot. We had 16 adults and 3 children (and 4 day visitors) attend our annual family camping trip, and it was so much fun! There was a lot of time for relaxing and stitching - in the forest, at the beach (under an umbrella) and at the camp site.

There was a bear reported in the Provincial Park where we were camping, which is always an interesting element of tent  camping! We have a few legendary bear stories in the family, which is why I made the bear quilt in 2017 and also inspired me to stitch "Wild Whimsey Bear" by Darling and Whimsey Designs.

I finished this sweet little bear cross stitch into a miniature quilt and it was given to a family member as a souvenir of the 2025 family camp. 

My niece has recently learned to sew and she made pillowcases for us this year - and of course she used bear fabric! I am so proud of her! 

While camping I finished the Canada Goose chart that was given to me by Kate when I attended Stitch North in the spring. This photo is called "goose on the loose"!

I'll add this to the pile of bird stitcheries that will go in my developing (in my head) book of birds.

When I returned home from camping I made a flosstube video of the projects I had worked on in June. You can view the video here. 

I really enjoyed the stitching projects I spent time with in June and look forward to the 4 new starts ready for July's stitching time! 

What are you stitching on in July? Are you relaxing in hot summer weather or enjoying the winter season down under? Please link up your blog post below and share your stitching with us!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! If you enjoy hand stitching, you are at the right place. Do you like making hexies, crochet, embroidery, rug hooking, beading, applique, hand quilting and/or knitting? We love to see what you are working on and to encourage you in your stitching journey.

I have a June start and finish to share today. This project was inspired by Colorado Cross Stitcher's Summer Camp, where stitchers are encouraged to keep stitching over the summer with monthly prompts. June's prompt was to "Pick a pattern that includes a motif to represent day or night".

I rarely have time to stitch during the day, so I picked a little pattern from Tiny Modernist called Twilight Moon since I am a night stitcher.  It's so cute how the moon is asleep (because it's night time!) and there is so much life going on right under her nose - a lovely little home and beautiful flowers, mushrooms, and trees are growing within it's protected space.

The fabric base is Roxy's Sea Party 18 count aida and it was a dream to stitch on.

My plan was to stitch this project in the recommended DMC colours, but  when I collected those threads they just looked too boring. So I chose some threads from my Roxy collection and especially loved the Chantilly thread that I picked for the moon colour and I love how the variegation made the moon look so interesting!

I am totally shocked by how much I love this finished stitch! It is not a colour palette that I anticipated liking so much, especially the purple thread that looks like dusty rose plus the dirty green, but the combination of all the colours is so pretty. And as I stitched this and thought about the fantasy moon garden, I just fell in love with it! I might add a few beads to sparkle up the night stars.

But now the big question is - how will I finish it?

I don't have a clue, but it made life in June 2025 a little more relaxed and enjoyable, so that's all that matters. It has already served it's purpose for me!

Now it's your turn! What are you enjoying with your hand stitching this month?

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the Slow Sunday Stitching weekly linkup party! If you like to stitch things by hand, you have found your tribe! Each week there are stitchers around the world who share their projects and progress (or lack thereof) to encourage and inspire us.

It has been a very busy week here with getting new shingles on the house during the hottest week of the year. On Monday with the humidity it felt like 44 degrees Celsius - which is 111 degrees Fahrenheit!! But no one fainted or fell off the roof, and somehow they completed the job.

This week I started a Modern Folk Embroidery project called "Quaker Medallion - Bird in a Grapevine". I am using DMC floss #4515 to stitch on Roxy's porcelain 18 count fabric and I'm really enjoying it! It has been fun to experiment with the variegated thread and I'm trying to make the centre bird from the darkest parts of the thread.

I have also being keeping up with the Extraordinary Birds SAL by Lola Crow. 

It is such immersive stitching and I am "losing" lots of time in this project! I love the enormous Southern Cassowary bird on the left! So far I have stitched 10,426 stitches which was 98% of the total number of stitches before Friday. This week we were given a new part to stitch and this step includes a Toucan. So fun!

What are you hand stitching this week? Please share your projects with us in the link up below!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

It's an extra special party this week celebrating the 13th anniversary of Slow Sunday Stitching adventures! The first link up was June 24, 2012 and I had no idea that all these years later it would still be continuing. My original goal was to inspire people to slow down, to take a deep breath, to dedicate precious time to the healing process of hand work, and to connect with other creative like-minded stitchers. I thank each of the stitchers in the past and the present for helping to continue this tradition by participating by linking up their blog posts, writing encouraging comments, and most of all by spending time with your hand stitching projects.

This week I finished stitching another bird - a golden finch. The motivation to start this project came from Anna and Carolyn who are the Curious Crafters. They issued a colour exploration challenge to take a black and white pattern and select your own colours to stitch the design. I chose the "Golden Finch Free Bee" pattern by La-D-Da and gathered these threads from my collection.

Here is how the Gold Finch looked after being stitched. I was very happy with how it turned out. I then researched the bird and found out that they do not have so much black on their heads, and their beaks are orange. But overall I think I did a decent job of the thread colour choices. 

Then I had to make more decisions about finishing the design - the letters, the branches, the flowers, and the border. Here is the finished stitch.

The letter thread was my second attempt as the first choice looked too dull. I changed the design slightly on the top left by making the corner the same as 2 of the other corners. (I didn't know what it was that the pattern actually had in that space.) I experimented with different colours of flowers and stuck with the purple since it didn't draw any attention away from the pretty bird.

I'm quite chuffed with how it turned out and loved stitching the letters! I think I might add a bead or a french knot to give the bird... a "bird's eye view"! LOL

When I make little stitcheries like this people always ask me "what will you do with it"? I don't really know because I stitch for the sanity and relaxation and happiness it brings me! 

I have been inspired by our friend Margaret over at Crafty Creek to consider making a book from some of my finished stitches. She posted her beautiful Birds and Blooms book back in May. And if you didn't see her flip through video, you can click here to view it. 

What purpose does it serve except to bring beauty and inspiration to others? I think that is a noble purpose indeed!

So thank you to every one of you who stitch and create beauty in our world to share with and inspire us! 

Here's this week's link up:

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! 

Get out your needles and thread, and join hand stitchers around the world who are benefitting from the process of creating something with our own hands. 

I am definitely benefitting from my hand stitching this week. Just sitting quietly, project in hand, needle in and out, and breathing. I have been working on my full coverage stitching which I started in March. This is a Heaven and Earth Designs chart called Mini Treasure Hunt Bookshelf with the artwork by Aimee Stewart. The pattern is on sale for $6 if you can believe it!

This is such an interesting process for me. Full coverage is a deep dive into mindfulness - finding the next stitch, putting the needle up and down into the 25 count lugana, rethreading the needle, finding the next colour to work on... nothing else enters my mind. And before you know it, hours have passed. 

Not much progress seems to have been made. I have put 3,221 stitches into this project so far which is 4.22% of the total number of stitches according to the Pattern Keeper APP.  I know that this project will take me years to finish and I hope I live long enough to see it through to completion. But if I don't, that's still okay - I will have enjoyed the process of taking every single stitch!

Do you have long term hand stitching projects that will take you years to complete? Or projects that will never be finished? Please share your slow progress with us and link up your blog post below.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! Our goal is to encourage you to pick up your project, put a few stitches in, take some deep breaths, and enjoy the happy feelings that will likely result! 

I have been having a wonderful time stitching the Lola Crow SAL (Stitch-A-Long) called Extraordinary Birds. I enjoy learning about a wide variety of birds and stitching them on my 18 count hand dyed aida.

This is the bottom of the design and as of yesterday I have completed 8,166 stitches which is 92% of the needed stitches up to "Feat 3" (which was posted last week).  Feat #4 was just posted on Friday and I haven't yet imported the pattern into Pattern Keeper since I wanted to complete more on the previous parts. 

This photo shows part of my stitching in front of my tablet with the Pattern Keeper screen open. See on the right side of the screen where there are 6 thread colours that are finished? Seeing the new "0" stitches makes me so happy and motivates me to keep stitching to see more zeros!

Today I hope to finish the stitching for Feat 3 and then I will import Feat 4 into Pattern Keeper so I can keep making progress. Next week there will not be a pattern release so we have an extra week to catch up. 

What are you hand stitching as June begins? Please share your projects with us and link up your blog below.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly celebration of hand stitching! It's the one time a week where we make sure to set aside some special moments for playing with needles and thread/yarn. We hope you will join us!

This week I have been obsessed with the Lola Crow Extraordinary Bird SAL (stitch-a-long). I can't wait until my work day is over so I can dive into my  thread collection and stitch more of the design. I am enjoying learning about the creatures as I stitch and look forward to another part of the design coming to life.

I talked about this project (and everything I've stitched in May - even though I said it was June!) on my most recent flosstube video posted this week - click here to watch. I haven't had much time for stitching recently with all the spring yard work, and fitting in as much grandbaby time as possible, but overall this month I did put stitches into a few projects. 

What are you stitching at the end of May? Link up your blog post below and share your hand stitching projects with us.

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Congratulations! We made it to Sunday! Sometimes the "rat race" of life makes it really challenging to get through a week, but we did it! And now it's time to slow down, breathe, and do some meditative stitching.

In my very few moments of stitching this week, I continued to put stitches into the Extraordinary Birds SAL by Lola Crow. I have finished 5,940 of the 7,152 required stitches to complete feat #1. That's 83% which I thought was excellent (all things considered)! 😉 But then on Thursday feat #2 arrived in my inbox and suddenly I am really behind again. And then I am back into my "rat race" brain, wondering if I'll ever catch up, and turning my relaxing hobby into a job!

 

In an attempt to reset, I say to myself...breathe, it's okay, you'll catch up, it's not a race or competition, it's just for your own enjoyment, there is not a deadline so just slow down. That feels so much better! 

And as soon as I pick up a needle, my spirits improve, the stress melts away, my heart beats slower, I enjoy the pretty colours and the sensation of the needle pulling the thread through the fabric and I'm restored like magic.

Link up your blog post below and share with us what stitching project is restoring you this week!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the hand stitching party! Sunday is finally here and you know what that means... it's time for some relaxing hand stitching!

It's a long weekend in Canada where we celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday. Canadians have done since 1845! This basically means we get a holiday on Monday, which I will use for stitching...yippee!

I have been focused on the Lola Crow Extraordinary Birds SAL and have been working with pattern keeper to manage this large pattern. I finally had success with importing my progress from one step into the next step, which was a major accomplishment for me (and helped greatly with instructions from Steph of Lake Girl Stitches). This is where I am this weekend - about 60% of the stitches complete for the first pattern pieces. 

This is where the SAL process gets tricky. I have been stitching for 6+ weeks on this and still need to stitch 40% of the stitches by Thursday. I try not to be stressed, but I know if I don't keep up now, I will never catch up. And then the probability of the project starting the death march toward the UFO closet will begin!

I did create a unique system (using an old envelope LOL) for counting the long columns in the aviary frame.

Count, stitch, recount, cross your fingers and carry on!

What are you stitching today? We'd love to see your progress!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Happy Slow Sunday Stitching and Happy Mother's Day to all who "mother"!  If you are visiting with loved ones and enjoying family time today, why not pick up your needle and thread, and put in a few stitches.

I have been stitching on my Serenity project (by Pansy Patch Quilts and Stitchery). This is how far I am as of yesterday.

I often hear stitchers complaining about border stitching so I am keeping up with it and not leaving it until the end. I am not loving the block stitching of the house, but am also trying to put in a white thread every time I pick up the project. So far the letters are my favourite part, so maybe I am going to become a "sampler stitcher"??

This weekend I have the privilege of babysitting my grandson and I am loving every minute of it. And of course I am taking time for stitching. 

What are you stitching today?

I hope you can take a few minutes to link up your stitching progress!

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Slow Sunday Stitching

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party!

It's time to get out a stitching project, a cup of your favourite beverage, and enjoy some relaxation.

Since attending Stitch North I have had a terrible flare up of my chronic condition of Startitis. I can't seem to settle to work on one project without my brain teasing me with other ones. I started Chamomile Cottage - a Diana Bloom design and have enjoyed every second of this stitching.

The colours are subtle and it's a lovely spring design. I am stitching it on 18 count Porcelain by Roxy Floss using the recommended threads. I am making good progress on it (considering the Startitis flare up!) Oh my goodness I see one half stitch in the photo - I'll fix it today!

I made a flosstube video to share the projects I worked on in April so if you haven't seen that yet, click here to take a look. In the video I showed the little needlebook/ thread beds that I made to give to my table mates at Stitch North.

I also talked about the interesting dilemma of machine binding vs. hand binding. I did end up hand stitching all the little bindings because 1) I love hand stitching, and 2) I just couldn't get the machine binding to look acceptable. I was really stretched for time that week and this photo was taken late at night in my hotel room while I finished these after the first day of the conference.

I have also attended a bit of the Spring Mingle hosted by Lindy Stitches this weekend. Of course I started a new project. Can you guess what it is?

I need some medicine for this Startitis situation.

Does anyone have any remedies to share with me?

I hope you will link up your blog post below and share your projects and new starts with us!

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