Her First Embroidery Project

Mind you, I'VE never done an embroidery project before.

I do, however, have the habit of purchasing, when they're on enormous sale, or acquiring, when I find them for free, craft or homeschool supplies that I think will be useful "someday," and then putting them on our craft or homeschool shelves. I find that with my creative, busy, industrious children, someday does come, and so I wasn't really surprised when Willow pulled Sublime Stitching off a shelf one evening, spent some time flipping through it, and then asked to do an embroidery project.

I bought that book, or perhaps received it as a Christmas present, years ago. This is how it happens here.

I think I could have pulled together all the needed supplies--fabric, embroidery hoop, embroidery floss--here and there from my stash of freely acquired stuff, but I also have, also bought years ago, also at a good price, a Sublime Stitching Stitch-It Kit, complete with two tea towels, an embroidery hoop, and embroidery floss.

And that's how, twenty minutes after she first professed her desire, without a lot of fuss or stress or searching about, Willow was here:

We read the directions and properly set up the embroidery transfer on the fabric and in its hoop, and organized the floss in an untangled manner, but I didn't see a good point to asking Willow to master any particular proper "stitches," so I just let her have at it:

Yes, the transfer is on the dark and thick side. It's meant to be transferred lightly, but I wanted Willow to have a good outline to follow.

And so onward, towards a swan with a blue beak and pink feathers, and a plan for green wings, I believe:

Like any good embroidery project, this one is set aside and taken up again at leisure. It lives, in its free time, on a shelf here in the study, right next to the embroidery book and the stitch-it kit and Sydney's embroidery project, because of course she took one look at Willow working away, and realized that she, too, had always longed to embroider.