I caught up with Anne Brookes weekly SAL over the weekend, luckily this weeks was a quick one!

This SAL is to stitch on a large hoop, I’m making mine into a book as I haven’t enough wall space left so I’ll have to adapt bits and it will probably be quite a bulky book! Each week the stitching is based on a word, obviously we can either follow Anne’s suggestion on go off-piste.

Week 3 word was rolls. For this Anne made narrow rolls of fabric and then couched them down with a variety of threads. She did quite long lines which help to break up the big circle of linen. As well as putting mine in a book, I’m also having a loose theme of circles. I tried cutting my first roll on the bias, thinking it would take the curve better…it might have done but it was awfully fiddly! I used a leafy quilting cotton for that one. I’m trying to use a variety of fabrics and threads, so I then made a roll from a crisp cotton gauze and another from some even-weave linen.

Having made the rolls I drew arcs on one of the linen pages and then stitched the rolls along the arcs, hopefully creating nice areas to stitch in in future weeks. I couched it down using perle and then some textured threads.

I’ve quite a collection of textured threads but I rarely use them, so I’m trying! I used a large eyed chenile needle to make sure the hole was big enough for the thread.

This week the word was hummock. This was made with a Suffolk puff (sometimes called a yo-yo) which was then lightly stuffed and couched down. Mine was very lightly stuffed so it didn’t dome too much and I might even end up taking a little bit out of it at a later date if I think it’s too big.

You’ll also note I’ve written the words on the fabric, following the curves. I’ve used a fine-point grey pen, I thought I’d start writing them before I forgot them!!

The next word comes out on Friday.