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July TSNEM – Knowing When To Give Up

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If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed me mention lately being in a bit of a creative funk. I've been making a lot of things for swaps lately (which I'll finally be able to show off!) but I haven't been doing any cross stitch and I don't have a project that I've been really, really excited to work on. I've been working on embroidered cranes for my 1000 crane quilt so at least I'm accomplishing something. But the deadline is so far away and there's so much to do, it's hard to really get excited about it at this point. I am also stuck in this place where ... Read More

June TSNEM – Log Cabin Pillow

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Making new pillow covers has been on my unofficial to do list for years. We've had the same ones since college and they were definitely showing their age. I got a rainbow of fat quarters last year at Notions Nook in Rockford, IL with a vague desire to sometime make a quilt out of them. I finally gave up that idea and decided a pillow was much more attainable! I have never made a traditional quilt block before or a pillow, so this month is a double whammy. I decided to do a log cabin quilt square for the pillows. I found a guide online that had the measurements for ... Read More

May TSNEM – Biscornu

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Making a biscornu has had a place on my to do list for a long time now. Halfway through the month I realized I needed to figure something new to try and I settled on the biscornu. I made two of them and they both went pretty quick, especially the scissor fob. I had a hard time finding a ton of information, but I mainly used the tutorial from Satsuma Street. Kelly from Craftypodes has an awesome post explaining exactly what a biscornu is, and has also been extremely patient and helpful in answering all my questions along the way. I was having a hard time ... Read More

April TSNEM – Foundation Paper Piecing

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Foundation paper piecing has been on my to do list for months and months but I have been really nervous to try it. I've looked at guides and I just could not wrap my head around how it worked. I also kept dragging my feet on choosing a pattern, there are so many options out there. Carina has recently been making these awesome, brightly colored paper pieced geese so I decided that would be a good place to start. I bought the Goosed Up pattern from Jeliquilts and immediately started panicking. The pattern looks so unbelievably complicated and I still couldn't make ... Read More

February TSNEM – Sashiko Embroidery

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This month for TSNEM I tackled something I've been wanting to do for a year (almost exactly, I posted about it February 4 of last year!), sashiko. My mother-in-law got me a few of the sashiko kits and a couple colors of thread. I bought some more colors from TaDaa Studio Stitch on Etsy and decided to make a bit of a rainbow. Sashiko thread is cotton but it's thicker than DMC and it doesn't split into smaller strands. I did another little sashiko project and used 6 strands of DMC and it worked just fine. So if you want to try out sashiko but are put off by the ... Read More

Try Something New Every Month in 2015

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Last year I attempted to do a stitch a day and I barely made it to February before pretending I never started. So this year I wanted to try another year long project, but I was trying to come up with something that wasn't so easy to get behind on. Once I miss one (or five) days, I just immediately want to throw in the towel. I had been toying with the idea of doing something with learning new skills but I wasn't sure about the logistics. Every week seemed like it was going to be too difficult to sustain. Thankfully, Stephanie from Swoonson Says is putting together a ... Read More