We were (unexpectedly) whisked away to Farringdon this weekend - it's a lovely little village just outside of Oxford. We were visiting my grandparents-in-law who were, earlier this week, down in London for a family event.

I managed to get some stitching done while we were there. No TV, no pubs - just plenty of tea, great company, lots of stories, and a bit of embroidery.

If you want to stitch along with me, you can download my free "home tweet home" embroidery pattern here. Just click on the link, and then right click to save it to a folder on your computer.

I've been adding in stitched details as I go along - a few pink running stitches for the bird's puffed out breast, simple long stitches for feather details, and some simple (aptly-named) feather stitches and colonial knots for the larger feathers.



So far so good! I think that these colours may be a tad too light for the textured linen, but we'll see. The pattern worked up really quickly. I think it took around two hours to stitch the bird and all the added details, and next up is the branch and leaves, the lettering, and the musical notes - then done!

Happy stitching! x

&Stitches is a fabulous quarterly e-zine and blog dedicated to the art of hand-sewing and hand-embroidering. Run by Carina and Nicole, two crafty bloggers extraordinaire, &Stitches is regularly updated with patterns, information and eye-candy related to stitchery inspiration and instructions.

And look who was featured this weekend:

I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. I'm happy with the linen background, and the soft colours used in the design. I like the lazy daisies best. I had to stop myself from stitching them in all the open spaces.


I've had a few emails asking for the template for stitching, so you can now download the stitching template here (flickr) or here (dropbox). Add your own colours and free-hand flowers or bugs. Bugs are very spring-y. I look forward to seeing how yours turn out too!

The days don't have enough hours in them.

I have never learnt how to do embroidery. Never. In primary school our classes were separated into girls and boys, and the girls would do needlework (I knitted a rat as my first project) and the boys would do woodwork. Then, after about four or five lessons into the school term, we were all thrown into the same class for 'design and technology' where we would sand down cast resin, or construct bookshelves out of wood. That was definitely more my style, which was convenient as 'needlework' was done away with completely as a subject.