sunflowers
Like many of you I've sure, the war in the Ukraine has been a horrible shock and weighed heavily on my mind. As well as making donations to charity relief efforts, and there are excellent resources available online to research where to donate, the craft community responded with many designers creating patterns to donate their profits. There have also been calls to purchase digital items from creators on Etsy who are in the Ukraine, this is easy to do by selecting Ukraine in the shop location menu in filters. These may seem relatively small actions but it all helps. I purchased the beautiful Sunflowers for Ukraine embroidery pattern from Wild Olive by Mollie Johanson - she also has a cross stitch pattern in her shop now. She is donating the proceeds to Hope International's Ukraine fund.
I enjoyed stitching this project, I tried some new things and am happy to share the simple stitches I used along with a few helpful embroidery tips!
I began by tracing the pattern with my favourite water soluble pen, Sewline Styla, and then picked out appropriate sunflower colours of thread. My Aurifloss collection isn't very big and the colours I had weren't quite right, so instead I included some 12 weight threads in my picks (the thread colours are listed below). I really like doing embroidery with both the floss and the thread, they are different because of course Aurifloss strands can be separated in the same way as other embroidery floss and the 12 weight doesn't separate. The 12 weight is a lovely thickness for embroidery, especially when doubled over / using two strands.
I like to use the loop method to start stitching so I often cut longer lengths of floss as it will be doubled over. When I'm being good, I like to separate the individual strands of floss after cutting. Did you know you are supposed to do this? It does help the thread behave and helps stop knotting. The strands I'm not using just get wrapped back around the spool (the wonderful wooden spool!) ready for when I need more thread.
For the inner petals I used split stitch, such a fun and easy stitch to do and it has such a nice texture for outlines.
Double Wedding Ring block
The Double Wedding Ring is a beautiful, traditional block that is associated with love, romance and of course marriage. For fabric lovers, this is such a fun block to play with, plan layouts and stitch! This is a bucket list block, one that all quilters will recognise and want to sew. It works wonderfully with either traditional or modern fabrics and is open to lots of variation within the pattern. I have made two blocks, one English Paper Pieced and one hand pieced (they are two different techniques) and will be demonstrating both methods in my upcoming online class. I had so much fun stitching the blocks and want to share my process here. Keep reading to see my two very different versions of the block...
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