WIPGO – Feather Stitching

I can’t believe it, thanks to my stitchy bug coming back very sporadically thanks to attempting WIPGO, I actually have a stitchy update this month … may wonders never cease!?

My first project called was for Mini Sunflowers by HAED – I loved stitching this one so much I kept going well after the 5 hours were up. Here are the before and after shots.

The next project called ended up having a bit of frogging to do, so reverse stitching ate up a lot of my 5 hours – most of what I put in on the first day had to be removed again … oops. Anyway, here’s my progress at the end of the goal. I think I’ll probably keep on going to get this one finished, though, as it took me a long time to find my groove with the various stitches and I think it’d make sense to keep going while I’m in the right headspace. I swear I’m the slowest stitcher on the planet when I’m working on this one!!

If you have been to retreats, what are your must-bring items and supplies?

I pretty much just bring along my standard stitching kit of highlighter or tablet (depending on whether I’m working on a paper or digital pattern for my working copy), scissors, needles, etc – and depending what type of stitching retreat either one focal project to work on or a number of smaller ones if I can’t make up my mind … more often the latter.

It’s been a veeeerrrry long time since I stitched anything on a regular basis … well, truth be told, anything at all really. It’s been an emotionally traumatic couple of years after the passing of my Dad, then losing employment for a while during Covid, then my Mum deteriorating after a couple of strokes. For the first time in many many years, stitching no longer brought me comfort, but rather was an emotional trigger – perhaps because it reminded me of my Mum too much, as it’s something we’ve shared since she turned 70. Instead of stitching, I turned instead to a new-to-me craft of cardmaking, which can be found under my Instagram account, Shacks Papercrafts.

This year, though, the bug has finally started to rear its head a bit and I’ve decided I may attempt the WIPGO challenge while my motivation is here. I’m trying to be gentle with myself and not put too much pressure on, and kept all the goals as 5-hour blocks. Most of my projects chosen are older WIPs, with some newer WIPs thrown in for good measure, and a few new starts just to keep things interesting. I may change projects on the board on a whim, just to keep myself interested and to keep the momentus going, but time will tell. For now this is the board how it stands at the start of the year.

January’s project numbers are 6 and 10, so I kicked off with number 6, Mini Sunflowers by Marianne Broome and Heaven and Earth Designs. This was one of the projects I was really keen to work on, so I was thrilled to have this as the first project off the ranks. I enjoyed putting needle to fabric so much I ended up stitching through the night until 6am – that was pretty insane, but it was oh so enjoyable … like returning to an old love. It has been really difficult to put it down, but I want to try to balance my crafts this year and splitting my time between my cardmaking and stitching, so eventually I put it to one side. I’ll soon start on my second WIPGO project for January, and the January ornament for the Just Cross Stitch Ornament SAL on Facebook, then I may return to the sunfowers again before we move into the February projects.

Here’s where I started from: