Show & Share

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might remember the Blue Birds and Berries that I stitched a little while ago. 

You may also remember that the piece was part of a larger project by UK based artist Nicola Jarvis. Several embroiderers around the world, were stitching pieces such as this from Nicola's designs to be part of a larger show "The Art of Embroidery: Nicola Jarvis and May Morris" at the William Morris Gallery in London from 6 July to 22 September. 

One of the other embroiderers is my friend Kathy Andrews from The Unbroken Thread. Kathy stitched a fabulous piece of crewel work for the project and shared her stitching journey in her usual delightful style of storytelling and images  This journey has now been compiled into a fabulous e-book and was released on Friday.

One of the things I really, really love about any stitching community, whether it being a local group or here in cyber-world, is the constant showing and sharing of what we are all working on and learning, and the dialogues of help and advice. Kathy, among other blog hostesses, often takes this to a whole new level.
If you didn't follow Kathy's story of The Acorn on her blog - or even if you, like I, did - this is a really lovely read. In addition to the story of acorn, it has little anecdotes, snippets of correspondence between Kathy and Nicola, and comment from readers and friends.

Of course you can scroll though the blog, but this little book is so well presented and much more enjoyable. PLUS and of course there is a plus... it includes the patterns and instructions to that you can stitch your own acorn. Isn't that great?

The pattern is provided as the full size, so there is no need to resize anything. The way Kathy has presented the instructions is just fabulous too. Each step of the stitching has been allocated its own page, which has a large detail image and a line drawing to support the written instructions as well as a reference back to Kathy's own story of stitching. You really can't ask for much more.

Enjoy your stitches,
Anna x