August Stitch-a-Long: The Next Embroidery Project

Do you read the Feeling Stitchy blog? (If you embroider, or have any interest in beginning to, you should!) I began following shortly after I fell headlong into the embroidery rabbit hole, but I've never joined in with a stitch-a-long before. They host them every month. Either I'm busy with something else, or the pattern doesn't speak to me, or the pattern speaks to me and says, "Be intimidated!" THIS month, though, I'm on the ball. This month, the stitch-a-long is to stitch on fabric of your choice, following the design. This is something I've had in the back of my mind to get to anyway, so this seems like perfect timing. (I did a little bit of this on one of my sewn cuffs, here.) So, the first step is to decide what fabric.

First I looked in stash. I have some cool dragon fabric (I didn't photograph it), but the dragon is HUGE. I mean, HUGE. It would take forever to go over it in thread, plus then what would I do with it? So I decided that would become something else... someday. On the way home from the library with all the kids the other day, I ducked into the local quilting store and bought a couple fat quarters.

There weren't a lot of options for large-patterned fat quarters, so I went with the one on the right. I bought the one on the left because I liked it and thought it might make a cute sewn cuff. But I also have this fat quarter in stash, sent to me from Tasmania by Tinkingbell:

At first I thought those little insects were way too small for stitching, but I put it to the kids, and we really looked at all the fabrics. We all like the Australian fabric, and we thought this guy would look great stitched up:

I had all the colors I needed except for the darkest green, too. So we went to pick up some dark green floss, and I took the other fabrics with me. We picked out loads of floss colors and then had to leave everything behind when the line at the store (let's say, oh, Joanns) didn't move for ten minutes. And my 7yo instigated my 2yo to misbehave, and she couldn't stop grabbing all that cheap tacky stuff they put along the maze they make you stand in while you wait to check out. And wait, and wait, because they understaff. And then when I picked her up, she inexplicably began screaming at the top of her lungs--not her usual MO--and then for the first time in nearly ten years of parenting I had to leave a check-out line with a screaming child, abandoning everything. (I include all this for any other moms out there who wonder about how come it all looks so easy on the Internet to tell you that it's not.)

So. I was convinced to try again, with only my oldest along, and this is what we have.

The Australian fabric, missing the brown floss: Where did I put that when I took this photo?!

The purple fabric

The flowers

What do you think? I put a poll in the sidebar... I'd love to know which you'd stitch up first, if you were me (because I have a feeling I'll get to all of them eventually). While I still think the purple-printed fabric would make a nice embroidered cuff, I also think hooping a circle of it and stitching up some of the design would look really cool. I love the colors in the flowered fabric. And, of course, the Australian fabric is unique and fun... but maybe I'd want to keep that whole and not go chopping it up for that one section.

Please click through and vote, and feel free to leave a comment leaving your reasoning as well!

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If you've considered taking up embroidery but haven't yet, make sure you check back next week. I'll have a giveaway of the basics you need to get started.