2023 Sewing, Cross Stitch and Knitting Goals

I’m not making the Make Nine List this year. Instead I have more generalized goals. In the past three or four years 90% of my making has been garment sewing, and I want to branch out.

Sewing

Garment Sewing – I will sew some casual pants and tees. I bought two top patterns on sale late last year: the Weekend Getaway Blouse by Liesl + Co, and the Corin Top by Grainline Studio.

I already made one Weekend Getaway top, and plan on making another.

Quilt: I am going to use 10 inch pre-cuts, and try a quilt as you go method.

I also want to sew other home projects – a wall hanging, pillows, etc.

Cross Stitch

I am working again on the cross stitch picture I started in 2019. It’s called Autumn Twilight and is a cross stich rendering of original artwork by Steve French. I looked him up, and found that he was a South Haven, Michigan artist who depicted many outdoor and nature compositions.

I didn’t get very far, and I hated working on it. So what has changed? First, I took it out of that heavy frame! It was so awkward to hold. I washed the dirty fabric and am using the hoop shown in the photo. The second problem was seeing the fabric. I wore a magnifier around my neck and propped it against me which was uncomfortable. I bought a pair of magnifying glasses to wear over my reading glasses, and that is working out better.

With 64 different DMC colors in the design, it’s a challenging piece. I still like the picture, except for the dark blob in the center. The dense foliage makes it hard to see one of the geese. Maybe I can change that. Today, I would look for a design with a focus on one subject that can be seen from across the room. My completed cross stitch pieces have all been small ornaments or motifs. I’ve never completed a larger cross stitch piece for framing. This one is 7 1/2 by 11 1/2 inches.

Knitting

I’ve been on Ravelry since 2008. After two non-knitting years, I started knitting on the very first day of the year and have already completed two projects. They are a doily style decorative cloth made from cotton, and a Boom! scarf from wool yarn. I only had enough yarn for a short version of the shawl.

I started a sweater in February 2020 with Cara Mia Yarn, and abandoned it for various reasons. This discontinued yarn is a soft acrylic/nylon/rayon/angora blend; very nice for a budget yarn. I have about 1,680 yards of Cara Mia, enough to make a cardigan.

I am thinking of frogging the bit I knitted, and starting either the Lucia Hoodie by Carrie Bostick Hoge or Blend by Shaina Bilow.

The hoodie is knitted in one piece from the bottom up with raglan sleeves attached while knitting, and the shawl collared cardigan is knit in pieces and then seamed. Both have positive ease, pockets, and a band in which the stitches are picked up and knit.

I also have yarn for a spring shell type top if I can’t get decide what I want to do about the cardigan. I may also crochet.

Thoughts

I have a philosophy that as a maker I should take on more ambitious projects at least once in each craft. I have knitted sweaters, crocheted an afghan, and sewn garments but only one quilt, and have not completed a challenging cross stitch piece. Of course, my main goal is to enjoy the creative process, as well as produce some useful or beautiful objects. It’s not a job, and following a passion is more important than a “should”. My favorite projects are those that I feel inspired to make. So these are just ideas – as the days unfold I’ll see where they lead. As of February, these are the three needle arts I’ve already been working on this year.

As I write, I see my theme for 2023: to pick up the threads of the past, to branch out, and have multiple projects in different needle arts going at the same time.

Embroidery 2021

Last year I embroidered two cross stitch pieces, and two embroidered designs from kits.

I already showed you the California and New York state pieces in this post: Little State Samplers Cross Stitch. I didn’t want to just store them in a drawer for years, so I set about to frame them myself.

I bought two 5 x 7 mounting boards, marked the pieces, and used a pretty tape.

The finished samplers in their dollar frames:

Not bad.

I received this Hawthorne botanical themed embroidery kit as a gift.

It contained an insert with illustrations of many stitches. I enjoyed the variety of stitches used to complete this design. My favorite was the fly stitch for the feathery leaf. I added some additional colors for interest. I have two shoebox size plastic bins of floss to choose from.

Why use a kit? The hardest part of creating free form embroidery is getting started and transferring a design; with a kit it is more likely that a design will be actually stitched.

For taking part in an Instagram sewing challenge, I won a voucher to Rocco-Sienna’s embroidery shop.

I chose a cute little alpaca (or llama) design, and a little scissor set, which is not part of the embroidery kit.

I hesitated on choosing this one because I thought I would get tired of embroidering so many French knots, but I enjoyed making them.

Both of these kits came with hoops. I always consider making something out of embroidered pieces like a little pillow or ornament as an alternative but these remain hooped.

Little State Samplers Cross Stitch

I came across one of the Little States Samplers by Alma Lynne on Ebay, and then bought a second state as a companion piece. The two states I chose were California and New York. California is where I live, and New York was where I was born. The finished size of the designs are 4-1/8 by 5-3/4 inches when stitched on 14 count fabric which will fit nicely in a 5×7 frame. I stitched them on oatmeal colored Aida.

New York snagged the best symbols: the state bird is the bluebird, the state flower is the rose, and the state insect is the nine-spotted ladybug. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a state bug, but the ladybug is about as lovable as a bug gets. I liked this design, and stitched it as written with few changes. I used floss I already had, and didn’t use the exact colors as charted. I just looked at the photo and chose similar shades.

There were a large number of partial stitches which made the chart hard to follow. For the rose, I stitched the outline first and then filled in with 3 or 4 different shades of the same color. The blue leaves were the result of not being able to tell colors apart when stitching at night.

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The California grizzly bear is on the state flag, and is the state animal. I liked the bear design, but not the collar and bib. That’s just wrong for a wild bear, and suggested captivity which is sad. The grizzly is a type of brown bear, and has been extinct in California since 1924.

Our state flower is the California poppy which bloom in March and April. I have photographed them many times.

I thought the poppies were too small and simplistic in the design, so I redesigned that as well. With the bear and the poppies as the only motifs besides the grapes at the top, I felt the design was lacking. The state bird is the California quail which wouldn’t be recognizable as a small cross stitch, so I can see why it wasn’t included. I got out my very old graph paper and tried to come up with something. I had never done this before and enjoyed the challenge and the creative process.

I sketched a pan of gold, but had trouble making it look appealing. Eureka is our state motto which means “I have found it” referring to the discovery of gold in 1848 leading to the gold rush of ’49. I settled on a mission bell tower and a wave as my motifs.

The wave represents California’s 840 miles of scenic Pacific coastline. California is also known for its 21 Spanish missions. The first, established in 1769, Mission San Diego de Alcala, is the inspiration for the bell tower design I created.

I haven’t framed these two pieces yet. Because they are so small, I will probably display them on a shelf.

Embroidery Love

Embroidery was my first stitching experience.   I started as a child with lacing cards with holes in them and a big blunt needle. Does that count?  It was also the one craft my mother dabbled in when she was young, embroidering the stamped linens that were popular at the time.

I have mostly enjoyed free hand embroidery, especially crewel embroidery, which is worked with tapestry wool on linen, although I have also tried counted cross stitch on aida cloth.   What I like about free hand embroidery is the variety of interesting stitches and that it’s quicker than cross stitch.  What I like about counted cross stitch is that it has a unique, precise look that works well with traditional motifs such as samplers.

As much as I love stitching embroidery, the dilemma for me is – what do you do with it?  After you’ve made a wall hanging and a pillow, then what?  Some other ideas are decorating clothes, towels, curtains, pillowcases, or tablecloths; an embroidered panel in patchwork; ornaments, especially Christmas ornaments; and using embroidered cloth in little sewing projects such as pouches.

When the weather was very hot, my interest turned to embroidery again.  Unexpectedly, I became interested in counted cross stitch which I had previously thought was a bit monotonous and unimaginative.

When searching for more information on cross stitch, I found out that aida or fiddlers cloth, which is composed of squares surrounded by four little holes, is usually used by beginners or the casual stitcher, and that evenweave linen is often favored by dedicated cross stitchers seeking to create timeless heirlooms.

I bought a 28 count evenweave Irish linen to give it a try.  This linen has a more open weave than the linen I have used for crewel, and each cross stitch is worked over two threads. The stitch size will be the same as on the 14 count aida cloth I used in the two pieces shown above. Oh, my – this is hard!  I couldn’t see what I was doing; my first attempt came out  wrong.  Some of the time I was catching three threads instead of two.  On my second try I had to get a magnifying glass to count the threads. The look is beautiful, but do I love it enough to struggle through to completion when it’s so much easier and more enjoyable to use aida cloth?  I don’t think so – at least not very often.  Maybe getting reading glasses would help.  But with some patience, and a big magnifying glass hanging from my neck, I completed my first small motif using this fabric.

If you’d like to stitch these motifs, or see more of the embroidery that has inspired me lately, check out my embroidery board on Pinterest.

I already used one of these pieces for a project.  Can you guess what I made?