Here’s my first entry for the &Stitches: Old Stitches, New Tricks competition – wish me luck! I had a lot of fun learning and improvising new stitches for this project! I wound yellow thread through black backstitching to mimic rope for the Lasso of Truth and combined […]

FREE PATTERN: Hmong Hat, Textile Museum of Canada
Source: Hmong hat, 1930-1970. Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto. Hmong embroideries and textiles are called pa ndau or ‘flower cloth’ because of the bright, contrasting colours. This hat is looking a bit faded – it must have been well loved! To see some more of these fabulous hats check […]

FREE PATTERN: Tudor Rose, 1749, V&A
Source: Embroidered sampler, 1749. Victoria and Albert Museum, London This tudor rose motif is from a British sampler dated 1749. Check it out on the V&A’s site for more info. I learned quite a bit about samplers while interning at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery in Preston, UK. […]

Learning from Ecclesiastical Needleworkers
Needleworkers of the Anglican Diocese of Toronto gather on Mondays to work on hand-made embroidery for churches across Canada. I was lucky enough to spend a few Mondays with them and learned a lot about traditional techniques – like how to transfer a pattern without using […]

Vogue Charity Fashion Show 2007
Vogue Charity Fashion Show is an annual fundraiser at Queen’s University which raised $23,000 for Kingston General Hospital in 2007. As a second year student at Queen’s University, I teamed up with a friend to design and construct what turned out to be the winning collection. […]

cross stitch scrabble
Here’s a little card I made for a scrabble lover. It’s worked in cross stitch with one strand of DMC embroidery thread.

‘calm like a bomb’ motto sampler
This is a motto sampler I’m working on for my friend Katherine. She’s a graphic designer so I wanted to have fun with the typography. I stole the lettering from a motivational poster I saw on pinterest. I liked the colours and how they changed when […]

hand stitching with machine embroidery thread
I wanted to embroidery this little octopus as soon as I spotted him on a poster for the ‘Carefully Planned Festival.’ After stitching him, I was delighted to find out that the illustrator – Amy Tidmarsh – studied embroidery at Manchester Metropolitan University! I used machine […]

‘live and let die’ motto sampler
Here’s a (finally finished!) motto sampler I made for my friend Emma. The font is from the original book cover and it’s worked in split stitch with one strand of DMC embroidery thread.

FREE PATTERN: Sampler, 1730, Harris Museum & Art Gallery
Source: Sampler, 1730, Harris Museum & Art Gallery. During my internship at the Harris Museum & Art Gallery I worked on auditing and repackaging their historic sampler collection. It reignited my passion for stitching and I haven’t looked back! This lovely font was copied directly […]

initials
One of my first attempts at split stitch. It’s normally used to outline shapes – but it makes a good filler stitch too! – Shannon Quigley

‘little and often’ motto sampler
Little and Often. A motto sampler in chain stitch to start us offSaveSave