with my new found free time, i’ve started a monthly craft day! the first one, on august 9th, went off without a hitch! we all had a great time and made some lovely things. read my short post about it here.

i want to switch between weekend afternoons and weeknights. the first one was on a sunny, hot sunday afternoon. for the second official craft day, i’ve been eyeing wednesday, september 9th. and for the third one, maybe sunday october 11th. anyways…

so, i’ve been gathering ideas! and the more i find, the more excited i get! craft day is all about friends getting together and making something beautiful, bonding over a glass of wine and a brayer. but for me, it’s more. it’s inspiring me to explore my creativity and learn new things, crafts that i’ve always wanted to know how to do, but just never got around to it.

i’ve been seeing some really cute embroidered things popping up around town. this one i love. alot.

i was searching around the internet last night for a good site where i could learn a bit about embroidery and stumbled across a great little site! Sublime Stitching. it’s a site all about emproidery. she has cute patterns, kits, tools, gifts, tons of stuff for sale. most important to me, she has a “how-to” page! she made a few diagrams of some basic stitches. that’s all i need to get started.

i grabbed my favorite pattern book of all time (which warrants it’s very own post), my japanese pattern sourcebook, found a lovely peony and printed it out. i popped a tea towel into a borrowed embroidery hoop and traced the flower onto the towel with pencil and away i went. i decided to start with a split stitch. here’s what i’ve got so far.