Overwhelmed with possibilities

Lately I feel my interests pulling in a million directions. The more I stitch, the more I realize I need to learn. Should I take a class in Sashiko, Crewel, or ribbon embroidery? Should I learn blackwork or redwork? Or should I expand my stitch vocabulary before learning a new type of embroidery? Should I learn to draw so I can make my own patterns? Should I learn how to use a sewing machine so I can make my own materials on which to stitch? Will I be a novice until I finally stop knotting my thread on the backside? Do I want to be an artist or a crafter?

I don’t have any answers, but I suppose I’ll just take it one day at a time.

So, along the lines of learning new things. I thought I’d share something cool I learned about this week. I thought I knew about all the ways there were for transferring embroidery patterns to fabric, but this week I learned about stamping. Stamped fabrics come pre-transferred with the embroidery pattern to stitch. It seems they quite often come in kits that include thread and stitch suggestions. I learned about stamped embroidery from the comments in this interesting post at Needle ‘n Thread. (If you don’t read Needle ‘n Thread, you should. Mary Corbet is such an inspiration in terms of her range of knowledge and skill. She’s probably a major reason I feel inspired to expand my knowledge.) In reading the comments to this post I found out about a couple of places online to order stamped embroidery: Herrschner’s and Plaid Online. And a search for “stamped embroidery” at Amazon reveals hundreds of results.

I’ll be sure to let you know if I try out one of these kits how it goes. In the meantime I’m almost done with my current project, a Dia de los Muertos linen skirt.

And don’t forget the next group stitch is a week away. I hope you can make it. Visit the Events page for info.