Let's Stitch Flowers Together!
A new course for 2025
Hejsa!
How are you? I hope 2025 is treating you well so far. Many years ago, I studied Latin and I still get geekily excited when the Latin numeral for a new year is aesthetically pleasing. 2025 is MMXXV. I quite like that. :-)
Speaking of things you get nerdy about. Every time I watch Groundhog Day, I think to myself “I wonder what the pattern is for the quilt on Phil’s bed” and “I would love to make that.”
Well, it was on telly on New Year’s Eve and I decided that 2025 is the year I do something about it. Call it my side quest. Or complete obsession. I drew a basic pattern from screenshots I found online and the other day I sat down and watched the film again so I could stop it whenever the quilt was in shot. Now I can refine the pattern and maybe do a scaled down test. I am very excited! But I have to submit my tax return first! :-D
Another exciting project for 2025 is my new Wheel of The Year project. This will be a textile book again and you can make it too!
It will be a yearlong course where for each season in the year you will get access to templates and a video tutorial showing how to make that season’s page. The basic project is a textile book with eight pages, but I have a bunch of ideas and tips for expanding it to a larger project.
I will be stitching my project by machine, with some hand embroidery details, but it is definitely possible to work this by hand. Annnd, there will be at least a couple of hand embroidery patterns included as well. Just for fun. Which can be used separately or together with the main project.
Save 10% if you join by January 26th with this code: 10WHEEL2025.
In the 2024 Wheel project I made naturalistic plants but in 2025 the pages will be more ‘designed’ so each will have a wreath made from just one plant. I’m basically taking my favourites from 2024 and spending more time with them! :-)
I made a video about my finished 2024 Wheel project and shared it over on YouTube. It is easier to show a 3D project like this in a video…
I am really happy with the finished project. There are some things about that aren’t exactly how I prefer them it but I am still so so delighted with it. I am really glad I didn’t give up on this project. :-)
Squishy, colourful pages! Full of flowers and other plants! :-)
The project has been a really lovely companion through last year. Making me read about wildflowers and making me notice those flowers out in nature. I love how this project has put me on first name basis with a lot of new plants. :-)
I hope you have a lovely weekend!
x Carina
Some Things I Am Enjoying
Book: Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art* by Mary Gabriel. I finally finished listening to this book. I am glad I didn’t read it with my eyes because I think I would have given up, despite how interesting the book is. But it’s 944 pages long! And there are a lot of details, maybe the book could have been a bit shorter without losing anything. Anyway, it was interesting! I learnt a lot about these artists and the other artists in their circle. To be honest, I’d only ever heard of Lee Krasner and of course that was as ‘the wife of Jackson Pollock’ because that’s what art history has been like…
Watching: Patience. We watched a couple of episodes so far and enjoyed it. “Patience catalogues evidence in the Yorkshire Police records department. A brilliant self-taught criminologist with keen crime scene instincts, her talent is spotted by Metcalf, opening new worlds for the archivist.”
Music: January 2025 playlist.
Instagram: @rosaharradine A brush and broom maker. I love seeing the work of people who make something very niche, and very beautiful. I would love to have one of her brushes.
*bookshop.org affiliate link.
Some Interesting Things on The Internet
Mosaic Atlas. Mosaics from all over the world. I have this ‘one day’ project idea to make a quilt inspired by/copied from an ancient Roman mosaic. One day… :-)
I randomly came across The Leonardo da Vinci series by Ken Burns on iPlayer. I have watched the first episode and it is very good.
Ken Burns, by the way, is a quilt collector.
Happy Public Domain Day 2025. A list on Wikipedia: works that have entered public domain this year. The paintings by Frida Kahlo!!
Speaking public domain, here is an archive with images that are in the public domain.
AI has an environmental problem. Here’s what the world can do about that.
Turning Off Adobe Acrobat's AI Assistant. AI cr@p is sneaking in everywhere. Literally no one asked for this. Except for a handful of tech bros in Silicon Valley.
Bluesky is working on a photo sharing app called Flashes. A would-be alternative to Instagram?
Watch on YouTube: Satin Stitch - Understanding the Z rule.