I'd rather be stitchin'

1 May 2026

April Round-Up!

April just flew by, but I still managed to have a productive month of stitching.

My stats show I stitched on 6 projects in all, working on 3 wips and 3 new starts and I ended up with 4 finishes and 2 FFO's.

The 3 wips were :-

Bluebird of Happiness - Cottage Garden Samplings

'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' Historische Stickmuster

and 'Patterned Pretties' - Jeannette Douglass Design.

This one ended up being one of my 4 finishes and will be fully finished into a pin pillow.

The 3 new starts, brought the total of finishes to 4 for the month.

Four Calling Birds from Bothy Threads '12 Days of Christmas'.

I love how this piece is coming together!

Quick Quaker Sal from Modern Folk Embroidery.

Jacob designed this chart to celebrate his 15 year anniversary of working with Caroline from Evertote and Kerri from Roxy Floss Co.

The final new start was 'Floral Etchings' from Heart in Hand, which you will see I have stitched as individual panels instead of all as one piece.

The reason for this was that around 7 years ago I purchased a large mirror for my hallway and they had this picture frame matched it.

Ever since I've been on the lookout for the perfect design and I struck lucky when I came across Floral Etchings. I purchased all four designs, with the intension of swapping them out each season.

At first I was going the stitch the chart as is and discard the photo mount, but in the end I decided to stitch them individually as you see above, which also saved wasting a lot of the linen and then mounted them behind each of the apertures.

My final FFO was the month long 'Quick Quaker Sal' from Modern Folk Embroidery which I popped into a custom made from Picture Frames Express.

Plans for May might well change because I tend to be spontaneous with my stitching, but I'm going to try the May phenomenon that is known as 'Mania'.

Stitchers perceive this in many different ways, from new starts every day, only work on wips, or focus on finishing, but I'm going to try and have a new start on every weekend during the month, meaning a total of 5, although at the moment I have no idea which charts I 'll pick up.

As well as that, I still plan to do my 25th & 26th Christmas stitching as usual, and finish the next '12 days of Christmas' panel which will be '5 Gold Rings'.

So that's it for now...........I hear my needle calling, Lol.

Happy Stitching!

Sue

Bluebird of Happiness

Designer – Cottage Garden Samplings

Fabric – 36ct Powder Puff – Roxy Floss Co / Evertote

Threads – Weeks Dye Works

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Designed – Historische Stickmuster

Fabric – 32ct unbleached Linen

Threads – Soie d’Alge silks

Patterned Pretties #4 - Kit
Designer – Jeannette Douglas Design
Fabric – 36ct Mystery Linen
Threads –NPI & ColorWorks Silks

12 Days of Christmas

Designed – Bothy Threads - Kit

Fabric – 14ct Zweigart Aida - White

Threads – Standard Cotton, Pearl Cotton and Gold Thread

Quick Quaker

Design by – Modern Folk Embroidery

Fabric – 32ct ‘Dune’ Hand Dyed Linen from Chromatic Alchemy

Threads – Hand Dyed Cotton from Roxy Floss Co

Frame - Express Picture Frames

Floral Etchings

Design by – Heart in Hand

Fabric – 28ct 'Inca' - Fox & Rabit

Threads – Own Conversion - Roxy Floss Co, Anchor & DMC.

22 Apr 2026

Four Calling Birds – Bothy Threads – 12 Days of Christmas

On the fourth day of Christmas my truelove gave to me……..

Four Calling Birds.

and this prompted another letter from Emily to her sweetheart Edward:-

Dec 28
Dearest Edward,
What a surprise! Four calling birds arrived this morning.

They are very sweet, even if they do call rather loudly - they make telephoning almost impossible - but I expect they'll calm down when they get used to their new home.

Anyway, I'm very grateful, of course I am.
Love from Emily.

You'll notice there are some beads on this panel.

I continued to stich on 'Patterned Pretties' again

last week too ………

and boy is that some intense stitching!

I have one final thing to share and that’s some photos from a day out I had last week........I do love a good day trip!

My cousin and I visited Arundel castle, down by the south coast, near Brighton, for their Tulip Festival and what a beautiful day we had.

We had heard reports about them being very worried about the unpredictable weather we have been having lately, because the wind and heavy rain flattens the tulips, which are blooming about two earlier this year.

We were very lucky though and it stayed dry but cold while we were walking around.

Just to be clear, it was very busy and there were loads of people there but with the aid of some AI editing, I was able to remove them from my photos, so please don't think we had the castle and grounds to ourselves, Lol!