Lockdown Embroidered Sampler

Hello my friends! I hope you are all well. Last weekend I sewed the final letter in my lockdown alphabet sampler and I wanted to show you the final sections. I have enjoyed this project enormously; making an hour to sew every day was a mental health lifesaver, and sharing one motif each day on Instagram made me accountable, so I made sure I did do it each day. I thoroughly enjoyed thinking about and sewing every single picture and keep changing my mind about my favourite. The rainbow for K. No, the books for R. No, the retro-looking sunshine for W which reminds me of vintage toys and childrens' picture books. No, it's the ball of yarn for M....etc...

I believe I had just sewed a sourdough loaf for S when I last shared this with you, so let's continue.

T was very nearly for Teaching (all that homeschooling!) but in the end was Tea, or a satin stitch cup to tea to symbolise the hot, caffeinated drinks that have kept me going through lockdown. When your day involves meals, homeschool, a dog walk, and not a lot else, those moments that punctuate your day become rather special, whether that's a well-made coffee from the machine mid morning or a cup of tea with something sweet late afternoon. I find people tend to be either tea or coffee drinkers whereas I love both. A cup of tea first thing, then coffee throughout the morning (the number of cups is dependent upon where I am and what I'm doing) and tea in the afternoon and evening. I've no idea why but there it is.



U is for utensils (thank you Jo!) to represent all the cooking we've done in this house during lockdown, in particular a satin stitch knife, wooden spoon and fish slice. On a good day, I am living my dream life, pottering around the kitchen all day with the radio on, but on a bad one I feel resentful of every meal I must prepare, serve and clean up, with absolutely no motivation to do anything. Fortunately those bad days are rare and I generally seek solace in our kitchen.

 

V is for Virus. What else could it be? I used French knots to create this version of covid-19 under a microscope.

 

W is for Weather, represented by a chain stitch sun. I am very thankful that the weather this spring has been so warm and dry - the sunniest spring since records began, apparently. It has made everything easier; time in the garden, walks, just my general mood and energy levels. Can you imagine how much harder lockdown would have been if it had rained every day?

 

X was hard but thankfully I have a son (and husband for that matter) who enjoy playing on the Xbox so I sewed a satin stitch controller. Since chatting to his friends online while playing Minecraft is one of Angus's main ways of staying in touch with his friends, I've had to reframe the way I think about his screen time and accept that, during lockdown, it has been more than usual and that is fine.

 

Y is for yoga, so here is someone in tree pose, done in satin stitch and I tried so hard with this one because it had to look like what it was - a person doing yoga. (No she's not a ballerina. I'd have sewn a tutu if she was.) I used to attend a regular weekly yoga class but since my teacher had to move premises the lessons stopped, and I miss it so much. During lockdown both John and I have been working our way through Yoga With Adriene's 30 day yoga programme, and now it's finished we're just trying different videos each day. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I'm much more likely to continue this than HIIT workouts.

 

And finally, Z is for Zoom. Of course, what else could it be, so I sewed an applique laptop. Ten weeks ago I'd never heard of this video conferencing app, but since then I've hosted a birthday party, attended staff meetings with colleagues, drunk cocktails with friends, shared quizzes with family and even "met up" with all my old friends from Leeds, all via Zoom. Thank goodness for technology.

And there we are; twenty six letters and twenty six images to commemorate this strange time in our history. I am going to get it framed as soon as the framing shop opens up. I have been wondering if I should add the date. I think I will, as this embroidery is so much about 2020, I feel that the year needs to be stitched on there too somewhere.