Happy Holidays!

Wishing you and yours a very happy holiday season.

Vintage Hand Embroidery

A few of my friends complain to me that I don’t post enough on my blog these days.  I hope they are just saying, “We want more”.  Over the last five years, since my first son was born, I’ve tried to carve out some time each day to do something creative.  Some days (and months) it’s easier than others.  It’s only been this school year that I’ve finally felt I have enough time to do whatever I want in my sewing room.  Ironically, this has led to fewer posts on my blog.  In the past, I would only work on small projects that I knew I could finish in a short amount of time.  This led to completing lots of small projects and, hence, lots of goodies to show off on my blog.  It’s only now that I have time to work on larger, more complex items.  These, however, take weeks, and sometimes even months, to complete, hence less to share in this space.

Case in point:  I’ve been doing a lot of handwork lately.  I currently have three projects underway, all of which have some element of hand stitching involved.  I’m still working on my Alabama Chanin dress which will take me several more months to complete.  Then there’s the hand stitched needle book that I’m doing as an online class with Susan Elliot.  Here’s a little sneak peak of that one:

The third project is a combination of machine sewing embellished with handwork.  I’m hoping to have this skirt finished in the next week to share with you.  I love how it’s turning out.

All of this thinking about handwork got me to wondering where my love for it had its origins.  My mom taught me basic embroidery when I was just a little girl, probably 7 or 8 years old.  I’ve still got a few of my early pieces, including these embroidered pants that I made when I was 10.

I never quite completed them; you can see the last design I was stitching on the front, a bunch of grapes.  I still have the pattern with the iron-on designs.

Who knew when I was 10 that I would attend a college where the mascot was a yellow jacket?

Or that I would grow up to have a love for dragonfly images?

I’m not sure what the ducks walking across my backside mean, however.

So, I hope you enjoyed a little glimpse into my early stitching life.   I haven’t lost the interest in the art all these years later.  I just hope that I don’t abandon my current projects with one motif left to stitch.  I’ve got blog posts to write, after all.