Hand Embroidery

Recently our church vestry went on a retreat held at our diocesan summer camp (St. Crispins for any Oklahomans) and the beautiful setting and relaxing environment made me return home in the mood for some hand embroidery.  We closed by singing this Sam Baker song-  it's a lovely way to wrap up, and I love the echos to Come thou fount, one of my favorite traditional hymns.

Anyway, I decided to do a piece of hand embroidery referencing that text and turn it into a cover for my three ring binder full of vestry paperwork.  I sketched it out ahead of time, and then just stitched away.  My stitches aren't very even- clearly I need work on my satin stitch, but overall I'm pleased with how it came out.  By the time I got to the words I was done hand stitching, so I decided to do those free-motion on my sewing machine.

I made the binder cover so that one inside flap has an integrated pencil case and the other size has a pocket to hold a notepad.  I always have a good time figuring out how to assemble things like that.

And on another hand stitching note-  I hand stitched my valentines this year!  Well- not really stitching, more like card-threading, but it was fun all the same.  I've always loved string art, so much so that I did a quilt using it a few years back, so I decided to take a simplified approach to it for my valentines.  It's just perle cotton on cardstock.

I was also inspired by some beautiful online calligraphy (I'm terribly ashamed that I can't remember where I saw it) to try some fun envelopes.

Although at the moment I've gone back to working on the quilting on my big two panel quilt, there's more embroidery/hand stitching in my future as I've signed up for the big stitch swap being hosted by Fairy Face Designs.  This is my first instagram swap, so it's a new approach for me!