April already started, which means it is time for another month round-up! Let's take a look at what happened on StitchFlroal during March and see the plans for April :)
March round-up
First of all, yay to the relaunch of my Etsy shop! I was SO happy to finally have finished the collection that I had in my mind for a while... You can see all the designs in more details here in this post. I already have ideas for the new designs in the same style and mood, so there's something to look forward to :) Also, a reminder that Cecelia Rose pattern is available for purchase now as well!
By the way, if you like the look of embroidery stretched on a canvas, check out the tutorial for mounting your hand embroidery piece on a cardboard.
Because I was busy preparing the relaunch, I took a break from the blog for about a week or so, after which we had a mini-marathon on new stitches based on chain stitch. Three days in a row we were learning new stitches. 7 stitches in 3 days to be exact. That's quite a number, but to make all the information easier to digest, I grouped them according to the similarity of techniques, so in the end, it shouldn't have been too overwhelming.
Here are the stitches we learned this month:
Actually, there is one more stitch we learned, although it doesn't have any connection to the chain stitch family. It's called Danish knot and I used it in one of my processes that I completed recently. It is quite a rare stitch and was included in my experimental practice piece where I also tried lazy daisy stitch filling for the first time. And really liked how it looks! I will practice it more I think.
All the stitches that have been covered on the blog so far can be found in Stitch Library or under the stitches tag.
One more thing I talked about recently was the hand embroidery rules that I break. Being a newbie in hand embroidery can be rather tough because there are many “dos and don'ts” and sometimes you can get lost or think that embroidery is too difficult or too demanding of a craft. So my purpose was to break that picture of “I follow all the rules perfectly” that I'm afraid you can get from my blog. I do break some rules, skip some things, get lazy to do what has to be done. I take the “have-tos” of hand embroidery easy. More like I build my own principles and rules and follow what works best for me. Well, I shared it all in the post, so check it out!
Lastly, I continued the Needlepainting tips series with the second part where I practiced long and short stitching with few leaf shapes and shared the results. It was more about how the color choices worked/didn't work in the given examples rather than about the technique. The outcome was quite unexpected for me personally, because what I thought would be a poor example turned out to be the best one and vice versa. Yeah, the practice was definitely fruitful and brought me some lessons to ponder upon.
April plans
There are some things you can expect from April without a doubt. For instance, continuing with the chain stitch family. I really hope to complete the whole family this month and it would be even better to stitch a sampler by the end of it. We will see how it goes. The sampler might be out of reach within April, but completing the family is my firm intention.
Also, we are going to stitch some Spring miniatures! :) I'm really excited about this one. Initially, I wanted only to stitch a little branch of Mimosa for my own practice, then I decided to make one more miniature with another plant and then it became a set of 6 spring plants and flowers. They are small and can be worked during one evening given that you know the stitches used. I will provide the patterns as freebies and step by step tutorials, so I hope a lot of you will try working them!
I'm not sure we can finish them all in one month though because I also have plans for other posts: I already got ideas for Needlepainting part 3 and there is another complete process that I want to share. Also, I'm working on the new Stitch Along and might share the progress. And maybe something else will come up along the way?
All in all, I'm really anticipating April and what it has in store for us and I just hope I have enough energy to do everything I planned! Let's be healthy and active this month!
What about you? How was your March? Have you tried anything new? started/completed a new process? And what are the plans for April? :)
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