Ann Wood : the 100 day stitch book

I'm not very good at setting myself daily stitching (or drawing, painting, etc) goals and carrying them through for a month or however long I intend to make myself do them. I start off in a burst of enthusiasm, which gradually drains away, I lose confidence, it seems too daunting and the project gets quietly shelved. Soooooo .... I'm giving it another try. Textile artist Ann Wood (www.annwoodhandmade.com) is running a 100 day stitch book challenge. The idea is that you sew every day, for 100 days, but for only 15 minutes per day. Which for most of us is achievable. At the end of the 100 days you assemble your work into a fabric book. All the details are on her website, including short videos that clearly explain the whole process.

I've been gathering up fabric scraps, trying to limit my initial selection of material so I'm not spending too much of my daily 15 minutes dithering and fretting about choosing which material to applique on to a page. When it comes to the book pages, you need to cut out 20 rectangles of fabric, measuring 7 x 5.5 inches. Unbleached calico is my choice, though the book would look good with pages in different colours too.

For thread, I'm using some of the vintage ones I've bought over the years. These old threads aren't always ideal for use with a sewing machine as they've a tendency to break or tangle, but they're fine for hand stitching.

This is the result of my first day's effort. I ended up spending 30 rather than 15 minutes on it, so I've decided that it's perfectly okay to stitch for longer than a quarter of an hour. I'll see how I feel on any given day.
Just for your info: there is a stitch club membership you can sign up for, which costs about £77 to join, but equally you can simply take part in the challenge and - if you want to - post photos of your stitching on Instagram.

Fancy taking part in the challenge too? Ann Wood's blog is here, if you do. Wish me luck!

Comments

Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Sari scraps, PVA, a couple of books and a necklace

I'm typing this as snow's falling, and has been steadily all day. It's not settling to any great extent, though I bet by tomorrow morning the paths will be slippery with ice. Which always makes me paranoid about falling over and at the very least looking undignified, but at worst breaking a bone or twisting an ankle. Oh well, it's ideal weather to stay inside and craft, isn't it? I finally got around to listing packs of sari scraps on Etsy this morning. I only made up six bundles as I've no clue whether they'll sell or if I've set a reasonable enough price point. Time will tell. This is a link to the listing, if you're interested. This vaguely pink fabric isn't from one of my Etsy packs. It's from a bit of experimenting I was doing yesterday. I'd seen a post on Instagram showing how a DIY version of batik could be done without using hot wax. The Instagrammer used PVA instead, and I wanted to try this out....

rubykittyruby

Search This Blog