find beauty in the small things

Hello

Here is my first blog post on my shiny new website. I have been making the most of these quiet times to sketch and stitch but also to get up to date with all the less fun parts of my business like book keeping and taxes so today I’m feeling quite happy to be free of numbers and forms.

I find that stitching is my thinking time, it's the time when I have new ideas for pattern designs and when I can untangle all the confused thoughts in my head.  Right now it's nice to be able to create something slowly stitch by stitch and escape from the news and social media for a little while.

For this design I put down the basic drawing of the girl. I knew I wanted her to hold a daisy chain and I had a colour palette in mind.  As I stitch I add elements with my frixion pen (like the pattern on her dress) then I stitch them.  Sometimes (quite often) I change my mind once I've stitched them so there is a lot of unpicking and restitching but I like this process, it feels a lot fresher for me because I don't know exactly where the fiddling around will take me.

I have restitched her pocket many times this week and I am still not sure that I have it right. It looks a little less heavy in reality than it does in the photograph but I will stitch the rest of the image and then go back to the pocket at the end..

My favourite part of the stitching is the embellishment. I love adding and do find it difficult sometimes to know where to stop!

I have embellished the sleeves with fern stitch (a very useful stitch for decorating or adding plants) and now I am thinking about what to do inside her headband.

For the colours, I began with the daisies so I knew I wanted gold, ecru and a soft green. The soft pinks and my all time favourite 451 brown seemed natural partners.

I am going to put some writing at the bottom of this one ‘find beauty in the small things’ . It’s a well worn saying but I think there’s a good reason for that. It feels like a good reminder at the moment and a lovely thing to meditate on while stitching the lettering.

As for the daisies, I’ve never really been able to see daisies as weeds. In fact I think weeds or wild flowers, that struggle through the cracks in the concrete are probably my favourite kinds of flowers. They are definitely the ones I sketch the most. And who can resist a daisy chain?

I couldn’t resist sharing a picture of the beautiful vegan donuts we had as our weekend treat. The lovely Beige donuts has been in lockdown like the rest of us but she has recently started up again with takeaway donuts on a Saturday. They are utterly delicious and perfect with coffee after a morning swim. Sadly we were too slow this week so it’s toast and marmalade this Saturday.

I hope that you are finding small things to be happy about in these strange and difficult times as well as taking a little quiet time for yourselves and hopefully the odd treat too.

x