This year I’ve decided to join in with two of Anne Brooke’s SAL’s, Bobbin Along which is a weekly one and What’s Sewing which is a monthly one. Anne Brooke is a lovely lady who lives not too far away near Brighouse, she started doing SAL’s in 2020 and has continued ever since. They are very much what I would call free embroidery, I did one in 2021 and it does push me out of my comfort zone so they’re good to do every so often!

Last time the SAL was to make a book, this time Anne is stitching into linen on an 18″ hoop. I know I haven’t the wall space for a big hoop, so despite the fact that Anne said her plans won’t work easily with a book, I’m going to adapt them and make a book!!

Every Friday she releases a video and a new word prompt. She then demonstrates how she is interpreting that work in her stitching. After much prevaricating over how I’m going to do this stitch-a-long, I finally started this week and stitched the first two weeks. I’ve chosen some duck-egg blue linen which was left over from a jacket as the base for the book, I’ve then picked a heavier cotton print of eucalyptus leaves as the inspiration for my colours.

The first word was ‘layers’. Anne appliqued three shapes onto her hoop which also helped everyone move on from the ‘white page syndrome’ where the starting fabric seems so big and plain you’re scared to start.

I have an plan to have a circles theme through the book, that might change, but I chose three different weights of fabric and cut out three different sized circles which then overlapped like the different layers of our lives. I stitched them on with a variety of simple stitches.

Week 2 word was ‘Loops’, Anne stitched an arc of loops which could then the trimmed to add texture and depth. I thought mine would get too squashed in a book, so after attempting a loopy butterfly which was not a success I changed to a thistle head which although the loops have been trimmed, they are designed to lie flat. I stitched a curved stem which follows the arc of the circle in chain-stitch, which of course is all loops! I then added an arc of loopy French knots, these are just French knots which are left loose, rather than pulled up neatly into a knot.

I’m trying to use a wide variety of threads this time. I’ve pulled perle, linen and textured threads into the mix and on this page I’ve only resorted to DMC for the stem and the French knots as I needed the fineness.

I think I’m just going to keep going on one page until it feels full, then move on to the next one, as obviously I don’t want a 52 page book, or even a 26 page one! I’m planning to write or embroider the words on the pages too.

We find put tomorrow what the next word is!