How to Get Started with Slow Stitching

[Music] welcome to the first of many videos I'll be making on slow stitching um where I'll be showing you what I've been doing and sharing my love of slow stitching and why it's become so important to me in my life what is slow stitching it's any kind of stitching that you do that is in the moment where it's the process of doing the stitching that matters more than than the end result if you like it's a relatively new term to describe that kind of stitching stitching that would have been done every day in the past for sewing and uh any kind of mending making quilts it's that it's just a mindful stitching that you do at your pace and in your very much in your own style so as you can see from this which is my uh stitched nature journal Nature diary if you like that I did from last year I'm very much inspired by nature and I really wanted to show you some of the books that can inspire you n obviously being outside in nature is the very best thing but sometimes even so when you come back in it's difficult knowing where to begin so one of your Inspirations can be books and I just wanted to share a few that I've got wild flowers that's a lovely way to start slow stitching because you can make it a simple as you wish so just a a little book on wild flowers giving you little jump off points you might think oh I'll do a few of these little stitches so these books are always lovely and all the shapes that you can get this very much is reminiscent of an embroidery Stitch and this it can just get you started on shapes as as well as actual um content not being worried about Faithfully reproducing what the flower looks like more just using it as a jump off point thinking I like that shape I'm going to do that you may not even reproduce it as a flower it may just be that shape that makes its way onto your slow stitching uh if you are interested in nature then you couldn't really go far wrong with Edith Holden's um country diary and she's got her sorry I'm reaching for to get this there's the country Diary of an abodian lady which goes through the year and this is the most wonderful inspiration again not to Faithfully copy just to use as an example of maybe colors that you might use one month not necessarily drawing the flower that's there but using that as your jump off point if you want to be really inspired by the minui if you like of of of wild flowers the concise British Flora in color this is keable Martin this was probably one of the first books that I bought and again this is a wonderful inspiration for you to get to know your flowers um it's all done in different colors so again this is a lovely inspiration and jump off point if you're interest interested in in flowers and also my great passion is birds and again this is another lovely book where you may just be inspired because it's sometimes quite difficult to actually see these birds in the world and that's okay you can still be inspired by their beauty so this is a lovely book too and there are literally thousands of books out there if you Google nature books these are all uh books I Pi picked up secondhand that been pre-loved and they've been very much loved again so books nature books that's one inspiration obviously going outside in nature and taking a moment to stop and look around you that's everything you need to come home and think right I'm going to I'm going to stitch something um some people are inspired by uh architecture and places they've been it can you can be inspired by anything whatever your passion is for me it's nature for you it may be something completely different so the other lovely thing about slow stitching is that you very much will find your individual style um some people love to incorporate uh raw edges I do some people also love to which is something else I have a bit of a thing about circles at the moment and stitching down and suff puffs it doesn't matter how you do your slow stitching whether you are very neat or whether you are very organic it's about having your scraps of fabric and your threads and making marks on your fabric that's all it is so I just show you some of the things that I've made in the past um some things which are Standalone pieces that I'm going to be still to decide what to do with and some things that I've made into useful objects if you like so here you've got an example of how you can have rough edging this is a plain piece of fabric and I'll talk to you in a minute about what you can use to stitch on but it's a plain piece of fabric that has been completely covered up with other fabrics and that's just a simple case of laying things down and seeing how you like them looking pinning them down and getting going I will be doing videos on that so that you if you want to do that you'll know how to do it but here you can see that I've Stitch some things down and other times I've left R edges this is a little slow Stitch pouch that I made which again is in the collage style where you put lots of different things down and then embellish it with stitching and that's been made into a little pouch embroidery now I think embroidery is slow stitching too because you are spending hours and hours in the moment stitching something that you love so for me embroidery is very much low stitching and I use that a lot and this is another one which I did now you can see here that you've got I've got my very neat squares something in me that just like likes to do that but also I love to just put scraps down and see how the fabric lays and make that part of it so just to give you a few examples also the other thing that I made recently was a little pouch that this again is slow stitched and just lots and lots of different bits of fabric sewn down and then I've made this into a little pouch which as you can see is already getting filled up with scraps of fabric so you might be in spired by the Sea and you might like to start your fabric your your stitching off with something that reflects waves so you may this is called couching again I'll be showing you how I do that there's all different you can you might be inspired by a landscape you may prefer to do some to do a bigger picture you may prefer to represent something that's real or you may just want to work with shapes or you may just want to work with color um and have a lot of threads and fabrics in front of you and then just literally make it up I do my stitching of an evening but of a day or an whenever you find it you just sit there with your colors with your threads and think what am I going to do I'm going to put that bit of fabric down so that's just an example of some of the different bits of slow stitching that I've [Music] done so what Fabrics might you want to to stitch onto that very much depends on what you want to make so for my Stitch nature Journal I decided for this one that I wanted a fairly blank canvas so that I could add the color onto that so this is a piece of vintage uh Calico sort of medium weight and that's a fantastic thing to use because it's just it's lovely and soft to sew onto it's got the right amount of weight and it's completely plain you could paint this you could do anything with it if you wanted to introduce color I would always encourage using what you have rather than going out and buying new Calico simply because textiles all have this history and you look at you'll look at a piece it doesn't matter whether it's been owned by you or whether you've found it in a charity Shop thrift store and you think I wonder who owned that before I think using older fabric is part of the joy but obviously if you don't have it that's absolutely fine to go and buy it so Calico I've this is my nature journal from 2023 for this year I'm actually doing mine on a vintage tablecloth which actually segments itself into the 12 months of the year too big to show you on here but old tablecloths and things like that are absolutely perfect to stitch on to uh an old sheet is absolutely fine there's also if you want to do more the collage where you're completely covering your piece then anything literally anything will do because you're going to cover it think of the weight of what you're going to use the softer it is to stitch into and put your needle in the more joy you will get than if you choose a bit of fabric that's quite hard to get your needle in and out of which kind of takes away from the joy of stitching and being in the moment really the other thing you might choose to do I was very tempted with this is to choose a busier background that you could uh embellish and just add on to you could put circles or squares on here and make up a lovely picture so really that's a bit that's a bit heavier but would take um a pleade shapes really nicely so basically any fabric that you have think think of think of the color that you would like I like I tend to go for light colors you may decide to to start with a tablecloth but perhaps you might dye it um you might decide you want yours to be blue or or green or any color does black any color you want um think about the color threads that you want to use and the overall look of it but basically use what you have so what about the fabrics and threads that you're going to put onto your backing piece now don't get me started I don't throw anything away I keep if I have an old blouse that I love that's maybe I cannot mend anymore or um it can be anything children's clothes even some of the clothes that that my boys have when they were little I can't throw things away so I have got fabric everywhere I particularly love these kind of muted tones of fabric these I've um tea dyed to make them darker that's something else I'll be talking about um in another video but you can just as easily have brighter colors it doesn't matter any kind of scraps that I have um I would well that's way too big to throw away but even if it was a tiny little scrap in fact I'll show you this that I have I I would keep it and try and have a a box that you just keep any Fabrics that you just like the look of I've even old tea toils that I've kept I just think oh I love that can't get rid of that um ribbons any kind of laces they don't have to be beautiful vintage old laces they may be modern laces it doesn't matter tea dyed fabric um little pieces that I pick up when I'm hunting around in charity shops again some more ribbon keep it all because it all comes together when you've chosen your color palette you'll gradually build up a little selection of fabrics and think oh I'm going to go and get those and nothing is too small so this here an example of some of these these are some really tiny tinier little scraps now and I keep them all because I know I'm going to use them I know I'll use that now that if I can find it I'm going to show you in a second I've been doing a little some little log habing pieces and these have all been used for that but uh yes you will need to organize your scraps into smaller scraps bigger scraps and believe me I'm starting you on something that will become quite a thing but keep your scraps and use use what you have and use things that mean something to you I remember making a dress from that I remember Fabrics of textiles are very vocative so I think using something that you have used before is the best so now what about your threads what threads might you use so anything is the answer regular sewing thread is absolutely fine to use if you want to I use a lot of I do a lot of embroidery with words and that's another um way to start which I'll go into in just a second but that's where your threads come in so you can go for regular uh embroidery floss this is DMC where you get each one of these this floss has got six strands so you can use as many of these I tend to use for this writing that I've done here I tend to use two two strands of this floss so you can use regular embroidery floss which comes in every color there are other there are lots of other brands I would recommend DMC or anchor just because you know they color fast and they've got a lovely uh quality uh the way they can shine sometimes on your work you can use tapestry wall so for my couching here which again like I've said I will explain in another video and here I've used a tapestry ball and then stitched it down using a slightly thinner thread so if you see tapestry walls grab them old mending threads again I think these are lovely to use in your stitching and if you whenever you go out if you look for these you will that one's all being discolored probably where it's been in a window or something like that look at that so I think that's a treasure to use something like that in your stitching H hand dyed threads we do a few hand dyed threads and you can pick lots of people do lovely hand dyed threads linen thread um crochet Cottons all sorts whatever you have this is where I sometimes keep my so this is the way I some this is the way I say I keep my threads this is often the reality of the way I keep my threads I found a little bit of fabric and wind it on so yes use what you have and for stitching down you can gradually build up um some lovely oril gutam and threads to stitch down if you got regular cotton that's absolutely fine again I'll talk about the stitches that you can use in other videos but hopefully if you have thread any thread and you have any scraps of fabric and you have an old sheet or pillowcase you can get going [Music] today so what could you make this is my Stitch nature journal and I would really recommend starting something like this you can start it any time in the year doesn't have to be January just to let nature guide you through your stitching just be inspired by a leaf or a quote about nature to to get you going you can make it this is big this is a very big piece which is probably well nearly 12 times the size of this yours could be this big in total um you may want to do a cushion cover so for example this here could be perfect for making into a cushion cover uh you could add fabric to the outside of your piece or you could make your own cushion and stuff it so a cushion cover is very manageable I tend to with my slow it and I tend to make things that are useful at the end of it many people love to have little books so they will do a little bit of stitching and make beautiful little books out of it that's not something I tend to do but that's another lovely thing to do and you can you could do a page a week if you wanted to or a page a month um I have one sort of slightly bigger book that I've done but the smaller books that people put together throughout the year here that's another lovely thing that you could do you could make a pouch um take your time also these things you might make this pouch in a week you might make this this pouch might take you three months or four months that's the point about slow stitching you just pick it up when you want to there's no pattern you just pick it up and you go with it so you might make a pouch you might make a little box pouch like here um which again I'll try and go into more detail about on a future video you might want to make a little draw string pouch that is it's another useful thing to make you may want to make this is actually been done on my machine but you may want to make a little pin cushion something really small to start with so the size and what you do is completely up to you if you're interested in following along with my uh 2024 nature Journal I'll be showing that on my uh the podcast that we'll be trying to put out uh every week if we can this year if you're interested in the actual more stitching with me I also do that on my patreon channel so I'll be going through my uh nature journal with a bit more chitter chatter in it so there are the things that you could make or a suggestion for some of the things that you could make so actually getting started if you wanted to do a nature journal in some way similar to what I've done here my recommendation is that you choose your initial subject so for here for example I've embroidered a cow parsley there is a little separate um video on the channel which I will link to below if you're interested in starting a little cow passle embroidery showing you the stitches you need to do and that's your starting point whatever that may be I've got some things here to show you that are going on my journal this year so this is a little snow drop that I've done this is the pattern by the way that if you've just seen this on patreon this is it stitched up I will be putting a post on there later on today this is a little flower that I did using some weaving and some applique this is an older embroidery that actually I'm going to put onto my nature Journal this year um along with some more detailed pieces this is how I start I will choose a subject it doesn't matter I think this year I'm trying to do my nature journal to be inspired by Nature generally rather than worrying about what's in what's in flower this month just be inspired by nature and let that start you off I mean honestly I could Stitch Cal parley all year round what I tend to do then when I've done that is I will because I have this thing for circles I will then literally draw around my hoop that's been in and then again I will cover this in another video but I will then Stitch that onto here and then I'll put one of a favorite quotes on it poetry favorite quotes from literature another lovely way to start that maybe your jumping off point or you may want to embellish it once I've got my piece on I will just add as you can see here just a scrap of fabric favorite piece of ribbon a little suffet puff I'll show you how to make those little bit of applique a bit of Salvage that I've just made into a ribbon a scrap piece of lace a bit of button that took probably that section there stitching every evening probably took me at least a week to do week and a half two weeks it doesn't matter just so when you have a little bit of fabric I've got a bag of uh Liberty scraps and I actually wash them in a little wash bag and then as they come out from the wash that's how I stitch them down so it's another lovely way to get little fabric scraps tear them wash them in a bag and then you've got them automatically ready to lay down choose your colors and create your piece of art because that's what slow Stitch is it's a piece of art and if you start small and then you can move on and think okay I'm going to add something else on there now and gradually start building up don't be daunted by looking at the big picture but if you want to start something smaller make this your cushion cover and just add some fabric around the outside [Music] so the rules for slow Stitch are there are no rules so find your starting off point find your little scraps of fabric some thread a favorite quote The Goldfinch comes with a twitching cherup chittering and of tremor of wings and trillings and just get stitching so I hope this is inspired you to do a little bit of stitching and I'd love it if you joined me um in my nature Journal use what you have if you we we sell in our shop uh Salvage Chronicles packs of fabric new and vintage and lace and we will be doing those in colors as soon as we have the time to get round to that but essentially you don't need that use what you have and just do some lovely sew Stitch Ing and I'd love I'd love for you to join me and I hope it becomes a part of your life happy [Music] stitching [Music]

Channel: Sherry Iris

Views: 148,637

Keywords: crafts, stitching projects, new sewing video, beginner sewing, beginner stitching, slowstitch, slowstitchingproject, nature journal, nature journalling, nature journaling, journalling, journaling, jurnaling, journeling, journelling, nature, slow stitch nature

Id: bPZvw43Qlac

Length: 25min 39sec (1539 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024