Firstly: I’m delighted to report that the biodegradable nitrile gloves have completely solved the problem. I’d expected to lose some dexterity with gloves on, but if you get the correct size they fit really well and you hardly notice them.
So hurrah for that.
If you’ve ever ordered any tangible items from my Big Cartel shop, you’ll probably have received one of my hand-painted thank you tags.
very simple watercolour tags
Stocks of these are running a bit low, as you can see. Instead of cutting into new sheets of watercolour paper I thought I’d use up a collection of cartridge paper/card offcuts that weren’t suitable for taking paint but were fine for collage.
Using the painted paper offcuts from last week’s sketchbook collage fest, plus a few more colourful tiny scraps, I’ve used almost every last bit of everything. It’s very satisfying to create something out of what we might call nothing – though everything is something – and hardly anything going in the bin or recycling.
Collage on this scale is very easy, and a simple process. Mini-landscapes at their most basic are just horizontal strips of colour, and they can look very effective with some straightforward mark-making or stamping. I used a corner rounder punch to shape the tops.
hand-painted/collaged thank you tags
I haven’t counted them but there’s possibly a couple of hundred here, enough to keep us all in thank you tags for a while yet.
And finally, while I had all the collage supplies out on the table: I’m taking part again in the annual Postcard Art Exhibit, held this year in the Netherlands in June and raising money for people affected by Alzheimer’s. There’s still plenty of time if you want to contribute a 5″ x 7″ artwork to be sold for this year’s charity. Go to https://www.postcardartexhibit.com before mid-March to register.
‘When you were there’ – 5″ x 7″ mixed media collage with found poetry
So far my plans for smarter working this year are going well, and I’ve found a little time here and there for some creative play. I’m not entirely comfortable calling it ‘studio time’ because I don’t have a studio and also I’m not ‘an artist’ in the establishment sense of the word. Middle-aged woman tearing up paper in the spare bedroom doesn’t really sound all that engaging though.
I guess we are all artists, in our own way.
I’ve been working on (playing with) collaging the pages of an old 6″ x 8″ notebook, using my own painted papers. You learn how to do this in my Painted Collage Paper and Mark-Making course, by the way. A little self-promotion there from my Marketing Manager (that’s me).
painted/printed collage papers
I’m intending a celebration of winter in this sketchbook. If you’ve been with me a while, you’ll know it’s my favourite season, and January is my favourite month. It’s cold, it’s still dark, it’s grey, it’s quiet, and nothing much happens, and all of that suits me perfectly. And we’re half way through it already. It’s ok, I like spring too.
inside front cover
For now all I’ve done is cover the pages with printed/painted papers. I’ll go back in to each page with either more paint, mark-making, more collage, or some text.
winter sketchbook, collaged pages
I’m really enjoying the muted colour palette.
collaged printed/painted paperssketchbook pages
There is, however, a slightly perplexing problem. I appear to have developed contact dermatitis, but only this week, and only on my right hand. Since I’ve been handling paper with both hands, my prime suspect is the acrylic medium I’ve used to stick the papers down. It seems odd to suddenly develop an allergy to something you’ve been using for years, but I can’t think what else it could be. I’ll try some (biodegradable) gloves and see if that solves the problem.
sketchbook page
Wearing gloves is probably sensible in any case when working with paints and inks.
sketchbook page with coordinating tags
It’s been a good few months since I made time for activities like this, and I realise how important and restorative it is. I’m being very strict about my working hours (no social media at weekends, no working beyond 5pm, and a weekly half-day for creative exploring).
I won’t post a daily stitching video every day, mainly because I can’t be available 365 days a year, but also because sometimes I just want to stitch quietly on my own without explaining anything. There might be a video tutorial maybe once or twice a week. Ish.
But as a result of the videos, a few people were asking where they can buy the spools I store my thread on.
thread on paper spools
You probably could buy them somewhere, or you could use sections of drinking straws, but it’s easier and cheaper to make them yourself as I do.
I hope you’re enjoying your daily stitching, if you’re embarking on a new year-long adventure. The whole huge blank canvas can look quite daunting at this time of year, but time flies and the days soon fill up if you just focus on one day at a time. Good advice for life too, I guess.
A new beginning or just continuing, it’s all the same really.
Today is about the Roman god Janus who looks back to the year just gone and forward at what’s to come. Stitches pointing backwards, and stitches pointing ahead.
1st January 2026
There’s a video of this one on my YouTube channel. I might do a video of tomorrow’s stitching too, but there definitely won’t be a video every day.
I’ve never intended the daily stitching to be a challenge or a stitch-along; I don’t provide prompts, themes, or directions for daily stitching. It’s more about being guided by your own intuition, and stitching something that is meaningful for you.
Hope everyone’s new year has got off to a good beginning.
365 blocks of hand embroidery, one every day for twelve months, each stitch witnessing the passage of time.
2025 daily stitching
Time is all we have, and time is all that we are. We have time, we make time, we find time, we save time, we spare time, we waste time, we spend time. We are time.
time capsule
This year’s stitching is about 7″ wide and 122″ long, cotton and silk embroidery threads on vintage cotton/linen blend.
People ask me what will I do with it. I don’t ‘do’ anything with it. It’s enough for it to be itself, a surface onto which I have inscribed time with needle and thread, a cloth I have held in my hands every day for a year, a cloth that holds and remembers moments from my life. The cloth will still be here when I am not.
completed stitching in protective cover
New Year’s Eve is a time for a final glance back, over our shoulder, before we move unsteadily forward into more of the unknown.
2025: January, the beginning2025: January/February2025: March2025: April 2025: April/May2025: May/June2025: June/July2025: July/August2025: August/September2025: September/October2025: October/November2025: November2025: December
Of course this is not the end, nor is it a new beginning. It’s just the continuation of time. Tomorrow is only ever the day after today, when we gather ourselves to begin again.
2026 ahead
Happy new year to you all, and happy stitching if you’re embarking on a new stitch adventure for 2026.
2025: all of it
You can find my daily stitching PDF templates here, information about pre-printed fabric from Spoonflower here, and information about my online classes here. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel here for occasional daily stitching videos.
I’m taking a break now for a week or two, to enjoy some rest and quiet reflective time.
daily stitching in progress
My shop is now closed for tangible items (thread and fabric scraps) but remains open for daily stitching templates. If you have a problem with a PDF download, then please do get in touch but please be patient as I will not be checking emails every day. My Teachable School also remains open and accessible throughout the festivities.
I’m preparing next year’s daily stitching by covering the grid lines, and it’s starting to look very inviting.
2026 preparations in progress
I’ll be back some time around new year with my completed stitching for 2025 and to begin again with 2026. It amazes me every new year’s eve how today turns into next year at the toll of a bell and an entire twelve months is suddenly behind us. Our human understanding of time is a strange thing.
Thank you for travelling through 2025 with me; I couldn’t make a living doing what I love without your kind support. Wishing you all the joy and peace of the season, and I’ll look forward to continuing next year.
I’ve been making a new planner for next year, trying to encourage myself to be more organised. Last year’s planner got more use than I expected, so I’ll keep it up through 2026.
Handmade book in progress
I use a cardboard template to draw each week-to-view page, and I stuck a bit of old ribbon to the spine to act as a bookmark.
2026 planner
I cheated with the cover and just changed the 5 to a 6
2026 planner cover
No need to reinvent the wheel or create extra work for myself.
It was a good opportunity to review this year’s goals, the ones I made in January:
2025 goals, made in the naive optimism of January
Well, let’s see how I did.
Don’t work at weekends: Fail. Pretty epic fail, in fact.
Don’t work past 7pm: ditto
Take 4 weeks holiday: Actually I almost made this one. Including the 10 days holiday I WILL take later this month, that will amount to about three and a half weeks for the year. Nearly.
Wednesday afternoons are for CPD (that’s a throwback from my corporate days, Continuing Professional Development) which essentially means throwing some paint/ink/thread around in order to learn something new: Managed that maybe a dozen times over the year at the most. Nowhere near enough.
End of year report: Must try harder!
On the plus side, I’m fairly sure I might win the annual Employee of the Year award. Only because my boss (that’s me) only has one of us to choose from (also me).
Next year I intend to make more use of my neglected YouTube channel, and I may well do more of what I’ve done today – daily stitching in real time, with running commentary.
I have a few other goals in mind (as well as repeating those above that I didn’t quite get the hang of) which I’ll share in due course.
For now, I’m starting to wind down and will be officially on holiday from 17th December until about 29th-ish. I’ll be back next week with my last post before the festivities, and in the meantime I hope all your preparations for Christmas and beyond are going well.
Just to say last orders for hand-dyed threads and fabric before Christmas is Tuesday 16th December, and that’s for UK orders only now as it’s unlikely that overseas orders will reach you before the festivities.
Silk thread sets
The shop will re-open for shippable items (hand-dyed fabric and thread) around January 5th. You can still purchase PDF downloads in the meantime. If you’re purchasing a PDF, the email containing the download link will go to the email address you used for the purchase, and that email may go to your spam/junk folder. Please save the download to your device before trying to print it as you may lose access to the link if you try to print it before saving.
I’ll be taking a break from 17th to 31st December, and may not respond to emails in my usual instant manner so please be patient if you have a question or problem with any purchases.
There isn’t much of the year left, and I can see the lower hem of my 2025 daily stitching scroll.
2025 daily stitching, nearly at the end
I’ll show the whole thing around new year, when I’ll also be starting my 2026 adventure.
Samples of pre-printed fabrics for daily stitching
When you buy from Spoonflower, 90% of your money goes to them. For transparency, I earn a 10% commission on each purchase, but I’m unable to help you with any questions or problems regarding your orders. For help with your printed fabric order please contact the Spoonflower help team and they should be able to assist.
Back later in the week with a little end-of-year reflection.
As always, just like that. Time passed, as it does.
November 2025, daily stitching
A few stitches every day, not knowing in advance what will happen. No plan, no design. Any given moment could bring anything. Just a needle and thread navigating through time and hoping for the best.
November, detail
I think my favourite this month is that little sprig of red leaves. I don’t know where any of these things come from.
November 2025, detail
Not many words today.
November daily stitching, detail
And not too much of this year left…
December ahead. Or behind.
A reminder, if you’re embarking on a similar journey next year (and whoa, suddenly that’s next month 😳), that you can find my daily stitching templates here, and you can now purchase pre-printed fabric here. There is also a page here with Stitch Journal FAQs and general information.
You can now buy fabric pre-printed with my Intuitive Daily Stitching templates from my print on demand stores. This is something I’ve often been asked for, and finally I’ve been able to work out a way of doing it.
Basically you will need to select the template design that you want, and then select a yard of your preferred fabric to have it printed on. The fabric is then printed especially for you and sent to you directly from the print on demand site. The set of twelve monthly templates is centred on the fabric and is designed to fit one yard, so this is the quantity you will need to purchase.
printed fabric samples
You can find the options in my Spoonflower shop and my Woven Monkey shop (Spoonflower is based in the US; Woven Monkey is here in the UK). The template files are labelled with years (2022, 2023, 2024, etc) but this is only to reflect the year in which I first stitched them. They all have 365 daily blocks, so every set of templates will work for any year. For leap years you will just need to divide any daily block in two to create the extra day.
For more information about the templates, please visit my Big Cartel shop and read the summaries for the templates you find most appealing. Broadly, they will look something like this when printed on the fabric (you will probably need to zoom in a bit to see them more clearly):
The way most of the templates are arranged on the fabric is four columns and three rows, back and forth, so the pathway through the year works like this:
The 2024 version is rather different in that it’s more of a sprawling map than a formal grid, and you may need the paper templates as well to make sense of that one.
Having the fabric printed this way means that the format of the daily stitching templates will be roughly a square on a square yard of fabric. There isn’t currently a way to print the templates as a long strip, which is what you can opt to do if you transfer the templates onto fabric yourself from my PDFs.
I’ve done daily stitching both ways, as a long strip and as a large square, and I don’t find that one is any easier or more difficult than the other. It’s the same volume of fabric, whether it’s long or square, and you only need to handle the bit you’re currently working on. But something to bear in mind if you think you might find working on a large square piece a bit unwieldy.
If you’re in the UK, my shop on Woven Monkey will be easier and cheaper in terms of postage costs; if you’re in the USA then my Spoonflower shop will probably be better for you. If you’re anywhere else in the world, please check the postage rates to your country for both sites to find the best deal.
If you’re buying the printed fabric from Woven Monkey, I would probably recommend printing the templates on their cotton drill or faux linen.
If you’re buying from Spoonflower, I would suggest their linen cotton canvas will probably give best results.
Please note that you literally just get a yard of printed fabric when you purchase this way; the daily blocks or months are not numbered or labelled, and there are no instructions. If you need the additional supporting information, you can purchase and download the accompanying PDFs here.
If you’re intending to use your completed embroidery as a functional item, you will need to wash your fabric (cool gentle machine or hand wash) before stitching as there will be some slight shrinkage.
There’s a video here showing you some of the options and how it works:
see how it works
If you have any questions about this, or there’s something I didn’t mention, please ask in the comments section below.
