365 Stitches

Hello! Finally, a post about my 365 stitches sampler which I worked on last year. I finished it on the 31st December 2021 and you can see my December stitches above. December was such a fun month to sew - with Christmas, there are so many possible motifs and images to create with thread. Mine included a poinsettia, wreath, paperchain, tree, bauble, card and many other festive details, plus two trips to London (the underground sign and The Shard building), plus a trip to the theatre to see a pantomime. Then there's the food: cookies and gingerbread houses and candy canes and Christmas cake.

Lots of people have asked me for more detail about this project and, while I cannot retrospectively put together a how-to tutorial, I can give you some details.

• I used a 12 inch embroidery hoop, the biggest I could find
• my fabric was a plain white cotton tea towel I ordered from Amazon
• my threads were a mixture of DMC, Anchor and whatever I had in my stash
• I mostly worked with one thread (pulled from the strand of six in an embroidery silk) due to the level of detail needed in such a tiny space
• Most motifs are around 1 cm in size
• I kept a list in the notes app on my phone of ideas for things to sew, so that if it had been a dull day, I could still think of something
• I was not always able to sew a stitch a day - often it was seven at the weekend
• there is not pattern for this as I made it up as I went along, but at the start I divided my circle in twelve equal spaces
• I used a fading ink pen to draw the shapes onto the cloth before I began sewing

Below you can see the project growing, month by month. Before I began, I chose a colour wheel. I really wanted to be able to use orange tones in the autumn months and red in December, so that dictated the shades I used in the other months.

January was a deep purple colour, and looking at it now reminds me that we were in lockdown this time last year, and had left the EU, but I tried to cheer myself up with cooking, sewing, walks, jigsaws, early spring flowers and reading. 

February was more of a purple-lilac. I remember two weeks of remote learning at university for my teacher training, our WIFI being tested to the absolute limit as we all tried to work/learn from home, my birthday, going for runs, pancake day, and a very boring half term break where everything was shut.

March shifted into blue, and many causes to celebrate: being vaccinated, getting a teaching job, the arrival of spring. My favourite stitch in that month is the magnolia bloom.

April, still blue, and a cold month. Filled with Easter, snow showers, cooking with the pizza oven outdoors, and the slow awakening of the garden.

May was green as everything burst into life; highlights included Angus's birthday, the Eurovision song contest (which meant a weekend with friends - so good after lockdown!), library visits, margarita cocktails, asparagus risotto, and cow parsley in the hedgerows.

June is still green and filled with trips to gardens and glasshouses, a birthday for John, washing on the line, a second vaccination, salads and sweet peas in the garden.

July was yellow and glorious: hot weather, work in the garden, football on the TV,  passing my teaching course, lobster lunches, ice cream, cold beers, fresh flowers.

August was a deeper yellow and filled with outings: Durham cathedral, the Angel of the North, The Alnwick Gardens, Yorkshire, Longleat safari park, the funfair at Southsea Pier, banger racing and trips to the beach. Closer to home were library visits, sunflowers and dahlias in the garden, wheat in the fields and brambles in the hedgerows.

September moves into a soft orange, with the faded colours of summer: ferns fading, dried hydrangea heads, conkers and mushrooms and rosehips. Also, a new term and a new season of Great British Bake Off. 

October was bright, vivid orange and I enjoyed sewing leaves, pumpkins, soups and pies with all the best bits of one of my favourite months. 

November was pink: pink knitwear and woolens, pink saucepans of milk and the last of the pink dahlias in the garden. There was also fireworks, parkin, fairy lights, geese, casseroles and stews. 

Which brings us up to December, which had to be red. Red for berries, for robins, for Father Christmas's hat, for stockings hung on the end of the bed and baubles hung on the tree. And Bella's fifteenth birthday, too. 

I've enjoyed looking back over this project: 365 stitches, 365 small memories of personal moments and the changes in the seasons. I love using embroidery as a way to record memories and special times in life, it is like drawing with a needle and thread. I have not plans to do one this year (it would be too similar, too repetitive) but I see plenty more embroidery in my future.

You might like:

• My lockdown sampler
• My holiday diary for New York 2019
• My holiday diary for France 2017
• My holiday diary for Cornwall 2014