Mid-January and Slow Sunday Stitching

 It's just about the middle of January and the weather here in Florida has been a mixed bag of rain storms, sunny days and windy days so fierce I could barely stay on my feet.  What happened to our dry season?

On the up side of all the rain as I have been enjoying the down time with warm cups of tea and some slow stitching which is always a good thing.

For 2024, I wanted to do something a little bit different with my hand embroidery so I signed on for a few stitch a longs. The K3nclothtales stitch along runs weekly for the entire year. It's the first time I am doing this type of stitching which to me is a more meditative kind of stitching, we are only 2 weeks into the SAL and I love it.

The first week was weaving fabric strips together on a base fabric and stitching them to the base. I used a basic running stitch horizontally and vertically and then added a stitched word mend which is my word of the year for 2024. I blogged about that yesterday.

Kathryn of K3n cloth tales mentioned Community and the weaving of cloth and stitch and how it brings us together as a community.

It took me a while to get the feel of stitching and having the raw edges tattering about which I love but never thought this type A personality could live with it without putting in a hemmed edge.  Here is the YouTube link for the video of what is needed for the SAL.

https://www.youtube.com/@k3n.clothtales

The week two piece is darkness and light, which seems appropriate for a winter piece as the daylight hours are shorter in the winter and darkness closes in before we know it. I love this piece, as simple as it is it brought me immense joy stitching it.  I made my circle a bit bigger than I had originally planned

so filling in all those seed stitches took a bit of time. I actually finished this late morning after my walk. I chose black and white at first than decided on the brown and light beige fabrics. I watch the video though before I start, I actually finished the first weeks piece on Saturday night  and added the Mend piece this morning. Tomorrow begins week 3, I can't wait to see what's next.  

Now that the second week piece is done I will continue stitching of the Goddess Airmid piece, which I was working on before Christmas. 

Yesterday I ordered 2 new patterns from Crabapple Hill Studio, Block 2 the Queen of Halloween and Block 3 Violet Soggybottom  for the Block of the Month Witch's Faire quilt.  ( Somehow I missed the 1st block which I am sure will be on the website eventually).

I have loved Crabapple Hill studio patterns since the first one I stitched back in 2014 in a hand embroidery class offered at a local quilt shop, it was a relatively simple pattern but at the time I had just rediscovered my love of hand embroidery and discovered an entire world of embroidery stitches that were new to me.  During the short time the class ran I was introduced to the works of Meg Hawkey of Crabapple Hill Studios, Gail Pan, Kathy Schmitz, Bird Brain designs and Blueberry Hill.  

Over the years I have discovered many designers, have amassed a large collection of patterns and started deigning my own pieces. This year I plan to pull out some of the patterns I have purchased over the years and start stitching them.  I am adding my post today over at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching. https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2024/01/slow-sunday-stitching.html