With over a foot of freshly fallen snow, and more coming down I am more than ready to turn the calendar page to April! Gretta brought me this sweet postcard (above) from Sweden last year, featuring Swedish illustrator Lena Anderson's heroine Linnea. I thought it was time to perch her on the kitchen windowsill again!
Motivated and inspired by Portland illustrator Lisa Congdon's online e-course, I'm excited to tell you about a little challenge I have concocted for myself. I'm pledging here at sewandsowlife, to you my dear readers, to spend at least an hour every single day of April working with needles...hand sewing, machine sewing or knitting. I will post my progress every day here on the blog. I'm looking forward to being accountable to myself and to all of you.
To start things off properly, I made myself a sweet little needle case, using this tutorial. I used scraps of old batting and my fave birch fabric for the cover and saved the wool felt for the pages. Rather than use elastic thread, I used a "hair scrunchy" for the fastener.
I also took some time time today to refresh my knowledge of hand sewing needles. Merchant & Mills SEWING BOOK has a nice chapter on haberdashery, including a bit about needles which are, "...of course, at the very heart of sewing". Needles by John James has a great guide on their website that you can see here.
P.S. Don't forget that April is National Poetry Month!
xo
Your talent amazes me!! Hey, I read an article that I thought you would like. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/01/bernie-sanders-trump-voters-not-deplorable-clinton-warren
ReplyDeleteThanks Nan! I really love to have a needle or two in my hands. xo
DeleteThanks for the link to the article. Spot on.
So excited that you are doing this, Karen! Love your needle case and can't wait to see what you come up with during the month! xo
ReplyDeleteThanks Judy! Looking forward to your "reveal" later this week! xo
DeleteThe needle case is so lovely and full of texture! Sweet little button and great use for a scrunchie! I hope you get good use of all your needles during April. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Simone! I sure do hope to up my productivity this month. We shall see...
DeleteI'm so glad you gave yourself this challenge, Karen. Lovely to see all that you've been creating this month. Oh, and I can't ever imagine you not having any ideas! :)
ReplyDeletexo