A Stitching Book: Tell Me What YOU Want to See

A Stitching Book: Tell Me What YOU Want to See

I’m working on a Left-Handed Stitching book. It’s a HUGE project, but I’m determined and am taking it one small stitch at a time. Yesterday I was working on a Threaded Backstitch and so I began to stitch on a piece of linen that I whipstitched some wool shapes onto. Once I had done one example of the Threaded Backstitch, I decided to go ahead and do a Double Threaded Backstitch. And once that was finished I thought – well wouldn’t it be fun to do a couple more, one below the other?! Do you see what I’m having to deal with here? After I finished doing those, the gap between the Double Threaded Backstitches seemed to be calling out for a little something, so I did what anyone would do, and found some beautiful Stef Francis Silk Chenille and decided it was perfect to Couch. Swoon. And then there was a tiny space at the very top and so I stitched a 2-wrap French Knot, which looked like a little tumble weed. Perfection(!) and that made me feel happy. As I stitched, I thought I could hear some Silk Ribbon calling out to me, so of course I had to find it, retrieve it, and use it, because what else was I going to do? Ignore the call? No, I don’t think so! So I made a little cluster of Silk Ribbon Roses to one side. And that’s when it occurred to me. I’m NEVER going to finish this book if I continue to go down every rabbit hole I see.

Double Threaded Backstitch, Couching, French Knot and Ribbon Roses

Except it’s SO much fun to go down those rabbit holes and who knows where they might lead?! Some of my best discoveries have been deep within such holes, which means this book will take a little longer to do than I’d originally anticipated. Plus I’m using lots of photographs to demonstrate each step of each stitch and I intend to show how to end and begin a new thread, in case you run out in the middle of the stitch, as well as how to end the thread once you’ve finished doing the stitch. Those are a couple things I always wish to see, but rarely do in a stitching book and that got me wondering, what about YOU?

Tell me what you like to see in a stitching book. What do you dislike? What do you wish they showed? What do you wish they didn’t show? What about text? Keep it short and simple or do you like longer explanations and even stories? What else? Am I forgetting anything? Tell me. Tell me everything.

A Stitching Book: Tell Me What YOU Want to See

A New Zippered Pouch PDF

With all my free time (insert eyeroll and a sigh here), I designed another zippered pouch! This time an abstract design – Playing with Shapes and it’s a little bigger than my Rhino Pouch. This one is 14″ x 12″. It is also fully lined, has a zipper and the wool front is perfect for applique and stitching. The PDF pattern, templates and detailed instructions with tons of photos are up on my Etsy shop. Everything you need to make this, is on Sue Spargo’s website.

Other than that, I haven’t been able to design much as I’ve been spending every spare minute researching YouTube, taping, editing, re-taping, editing some more, learning how to make a decent thumbnail (I still need to work on that) adding music and then watching other people’s YouTube videos to learn even more.

I’ll admit, so much of this was new to me as of two weeks ago, but now? Talk to me about SEOs, keywords, banner art, thumbnails, end cards, playlists, analytics, reach, monetization, and did I mention that I had never edited anything on iMovie ten days ago? I now know my way around not only iMovie, but Canva, and YouTube studio, versus the older Creator Studio Classic. I’m by no means a pro, but I’m getting the hang of it. And here’s the thing, I still have SO much to learn.

My latest thumbnail and video

Some of the most successful YouTubers out there are doing tutorials on… wait for it… how to be a successful YouTuber! Now that’s irony and soooo meta! But perhaps the most surprising thing of all, is how much I enjoy making videos. I am constantly learning, but am loving the process.

I thought I would be posting one tutorial a week, but, in the last two weeks , have posted five, with one more taped, but not edited and another, in the works. Evidently you’re supposed to have a regular schedule and post at the same time and day, but right now, as I’m just getting my feet wet, I figure I’ve got time to work all of that out. My next video will be demonstrating the Bullion Knot and after that how to applique a circle.

Soon I’ll learn how to code. (Just kidding.)