My son Nick and I were clearing out a few boxes and sorting through bins in the garage on Thursday mainly to unload things we haven't needed or missed since we moved in about 18 months ago. We try to go through stuff every 6 months or so and we always manage to have a bag or two of stuff we no longer need and then I sort the stuff into donate or throw away. Most gets donated like a huge bin full of ribbon and lace on spools that I barely touched since I picked them up at a thrift store. When I say bin I am not talking about a shoe box, It's this 56 quart large container.
So you may be wondering how does all this relate to slow stitching on a Sunday? A mere blast from the past while looking for several missing items that I use for embroidery (small light box and Sulky thread box) I came across one of the first hand embroideries I made before I ever knew stitches had names.
I don't recall the book the pattern was in, though I think it was an Erica Wilson design only because I recognize some of the animal motifs from one of her books. I had read several of her books, stitched a few of her Crewel embroidery kits in the 1970's, I believe this Garden of Eden was intended as crewel work but I did it with embroidery floss. I still do when I find a pattern I like.
When I first pulled this out of the bin I was shocked at the amount of satin stitch I did, it did bring back memories of separating strands of floss when 6 strands were too much. Working this was such a learning experience for me and looking at it now I can see errors and bits of cleverness on my part.
I made this a year before my son was born, he will be 40 next month. I had this hanging in a frame for about thirty years, the frame broke a few years after I moved to Florida so I packed it away. Once my son was born the hand embroidery was put on hold after making a few small wall hangings for his room. I wouldn't pick up hand embroidery again until 2014 when once again I was going through some craft bins and found a stash of embroidery floss. I haven't put my needle down since.
Overall I love the piece, I put in hours of stitching and removing stitches, they way I transferred the design is almost comical, I traced the pattern from the book onto paper, then turned it over and retraced everything with an transfer pencil so I could iron it onto the fabric goodness I had so much to learn.
One other treasure I found in the bin is this piece of linen fabric from July 1964 (I was 9 years old), it measures 36x50 inches.
In 1964 it sold for $2.20, I bought it for $1.00 at a thrift shop about 5 years ago. I have ideas swirling around in my head to embroider something on it for years I've had the idea of filling a sizable piece of fabric with embroidery so maybe it's time to pull out the sketch book.
I finished the embroidery on the January goddess, I haven't ironed out the wrinkles yet but I did wash off the stick and wash product, what a difference when all those black lines are gone.
I am linking my post today at Kathy's Quilts here https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2021/01/slow-sunday-link.html
I am also linking here at Life in Pieces for 15 Minutes to Stitch https://kate-life-in-pieces.blogspot.com/2021/01/stitching-time-week-2-of-2021.html
After losing so much stitching time in 2020 mostly due to illness it will be nice to get some regular stitching time in, even if its only 15 minutes.
For the record I did manage to stitch for at least 15 minutes 7days of the first week of January.
To keep me stitching I have once again joined the Facebook Group 1 Year of Stitches: 2021 and I still follow along with TAST and I joined the 2021 Journal Threaders Facebook group, I'll have a photo of my progress is a few days. I don't stitch on the journal daily, and speaking of journals I just checked according to my stitching journal I began stitching the Garden of Eden in January 1980 completing it April 1980.
