What I embroidered during vacations

Long time no see! :)

Hi, everyone! How have you been? I hope you had a wonderful time during the holidays! :)

Surprisingly, winter didn't really come to us. I guess climate change is going full force because we literally had almost zero snow... In fact, there was more snow in November. For a week or two maybe. When I went to high school temperature could reach -30°C in December-January... Now it is 0...+5°C. The difference, huh?

On the topic of embroidery, I have a new little project in the works.

To be honest, as long as I have the blog, I felt a little sad about not being as productive as I would like to be with my embroidery. Looking at other artists, who are able to create several new works in a month, I was wondering if I try not hard enough.

But the recent experiment cleared up my confusion.

It seems like the reason I'm not so productive is that I try to document my steps, take step-by-step pictures, which actually takes quite a long time. Meanwhile, when I just set myself free for this period of vacations, I found myself stitching A LOT more :D

So what was the experiment about?

In one of the blog posts there was a question about any suggestion for those stitchers who want to work some stuff but are not exactly looking forward to using it for home decoration or for applying it in sewing projects and similar things.

And, to be honest, that's what had been sitting on my mind for a long time as well. Me too, sometimes I just want to play with needle and thread, work something, but don't have any particular purpose for it.

So then I got an idea of making an embroidery sketchbook!

Or stitch book. Or embroidered notebook.

I still don't know how to name it, but the idea is to simply make pages out of your little embroidered works and then bind them together to form a little book.

Like that, they are not lying somewhere in a drawer lonely (that's my personal pain), and you can take them out any time you want, look at them, reminisce the process of working on them, show to your friends and family.

So I started working on the pages for my first stitch book and I had a BLAST!

The best thing about it is that I had fun with different mediums and styles that I don't particularly use in my designs and have no actual purpose for, but I had always wanted to try this and that and just longed to play with it.

That's also why I see it exactly as a SKETCHBOOK but like... embroidery sketchbook? Because it is as if you do embroidery sketches. Some can be more detailed than others, some will have used more of your effort and others will be just a play, but all together they form a fun adventure!

Let me show you some of the pages in a gallery below :)

As you can see, I played with painting fabric, with applique, with sequins and metallic springs, with DMC Diamant thread and other embellishments, and also tried various styles that I wouldn't usually go for when developing my own designs.

And it was sooo much fun!

Again, the benefit of this is the same as with a sketchbook. It BOOSTS your creativity, you get out of your comfort zone, and, most importantly, you feel safe while exploring new areas because there is no pressure on you to deliver a good result. This is just a sketch, after all. But it is still dear and, therefore, can stay as a page in your little book.

By the way, one of these pages is a draft for my next design that I'm working on. If you're on Instagram, you probably already know which one :)

What do you think of this idea? How would you call a little book like this? would you like to try doing one yourself? :)