Slow Stitching

Every year, time seems to speed up in the fall and it’s a quick glide from Halloween to Christmas.

There’s no Thanksgiving in between to slow things down in France.

I had just finished a marigold embroidery to embellish a black linen mask I made for the colder weather. Marigold is October’s flower, my birthday month, but I didn’t finish until midway through the month…okay nearly November.

That’s really slow embroidery.

I had a  vague idea of embroidering each month’s flower, on “useful” items such as aprons, tea towels, pouches or as hoop art.

Embroidering a flower-of-the-month project would take some planning, rather far in advance considering my snaillike pace in creating patterns and getting them embroidered.

Therefore, all I have to show you is my marigold in fiery fall hues and my project binder. Maybe you’d like to use this binder method for keeping track of your embroidery samples and projects.

The paper patterns (drawings) are stored separately in an envelope.

But the samplers contain much more information about the stitches used and the colors of floss, plus any mistakes or difficulties I need to look out for.

Here's the how:

• I used a small binder (9.5 x 6.5 in / 25 x 16.5 cm), since my sample embroideries are too small for a full-size binder. But you could also use loose rings, 1 inch or 1 ¼ inch diameter. (25 or 35mm)

• For the headers, I used colored Canson paper cut to 4 x 6.5 in / 10 x 16 cm and folded in half lengthwise. Cut your Canson paper (or other card stock) to the length of the short edge of your samples. If you have samples that are much too small, first sew them to a larger piece of cotton or linen, to fit into your chosen binder.

• Using a hole punch, punch two holes in the folded edge to line up with your binder rings. Then punch three holes along the other edge, one hole in the middle and the other two approx. 2 inches away on either side.

• To attach your samples, just fit the short edge of your cloth sample in between the two folded layers of Canson paper and using a long needle with thread (I used perle cotton) run a stitch up and down through the fabric and your punched holes on the topside and on the underside, so that your fabric is firmly secured to the header on both sides.

• You can write the names of the stitches and thread colors directly on the header.

I hope you find this useful. And that you can stitch faster than I can.

Let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in flower embroidery patterns. Garden flowers or wild flowers?