Good morning and Happy Wednesday! This morning, just a quick update on last weekend’s stitching!

I’ve been embroidering up some small garden border designs for upcoming summer classes.

Remember the mushroom question from last week? Well, I put that one aside until I can adjust it a bit, and I moved on to the next garden scene, which has a few more elements in it and is for older participants.

While this scene is somewhat reminiscent of last year’s Floral Corners, it’s a little different, too. It features many of the same stitches, but I mixed up the flowers and I threw in some butterflies.

I didn’t add other creatures, although I keep thinking a snail would be a fun element. I may do that on the third version.

We will only have 4.5 hours together (three classes out of six) for this particular project, during which time we’ll get the kids started, we’ll work on a little of each element so they know what to do, and then this project will go home with them at the end of the classes, to be completed on their own time. It gives them something to do during the remaining days of summer vacation!

As always, you’ll see some old favorites in here – stitches that I think are good foundational stitches, like stem stitch, fishbone, daisy stitch, chain stitch, backstitch , French knots. If you know those, you can do a lot with embroidery. (Each of those links will take you to a tutorial for each of those stitches, in case you want to add them to your repertoire.)

There are also some more inventive stitches, to show the kids how to think beyond just the written instructions in a book and to “grow” a stitch into something else. Take, for example, those little buds on the branch. They start off as one simple stitch, but I really wanted them to look more like buds than they did with the one basic stitch, so I added some new layers to them to dress them up.

I’ll go back to the previous mushroom design I showed you last week and tweak it before I use it. I’m not especially twitterpated with that mushroom, and you all offered lots of good advice for alternatives or adjustments. We’ll see what comes of it!

I’m dog and house sitting this week at my sister’s while her family is on vacation, so I’ve not had a lot of studio time. I’ve had some good stitching time, though, and a lot of laptop-work-sessions. They say change is as good as a vacation – but… the jury is still out on that one!

I hope you’re having a splendid week and that you get some quality time in with your needle and thread, too!