Here’s a project recently dug out of the vault and dusted off ready to resume work on. It’s part of a complete left turn my 2025 Daily Stitch project has taken, which I’ll tell you all about later. For now, enjoy some fraying, delicate patchwork of 50+ year old fabrics I’m not quite ready to let go of yet.
I think I’ve decided how to make this project work for me over the upcoming year. I’ve been planning to start breaking up the longer chunks into small sections, adding just one section per day so that a single strip may represent a week or two rather than just one day. But while I love the look of long pieced strips in a big log cabin quilt, I’m also very much enjoying the rigid lines created by the folded edges of these applied strips, and don’t fancy the idea of those strips being broken up by folded edges crossing those strips.
30+ years ago when I was a wee baby art student in the Bealart programme (link: Bealart), majoring in printmaking and minoring in textiles, my textile instructor Nicole Crozier called me a “textilian in printmaker’s clothing”. When you see how much I’m currently condensing the footprint of the presses in my printmaking studio to make space for my natural dye operation you’ll probably agree. But still I’m a printmaker first, and we tend to work in multiples. I feel the best way to go forward with this project is to make a new block each month, but finish each off as a separate small quilt rather than waiting until the end of the year to assemble them into one large piece.
This project is about establishing and maintaining a daily practice, not so focused on what the final product will be, and so far this year I haven’t fallen behind once (in stark contrast to last year). I am a champion starter and not much of a finisher, and my projects tend to drag on, and on, and on. Stopping at the end of each month and taking the extra time to finish each block with backing and binding as I go will actually make the daily practice more valuable for me, a person always working on something but rarely finishing anything. And at the end of the year instead of one large quilt top needing to be quilted and finished, I’ll have twelve small finished works. And in 2026 I’ll be able to move on to the next Daily Stitch project with no loose ends.
This means only two more days’ worth of strips on this square and I’ll be ready to quilt it.
My hand stitched log cabin is growing nicely.
It’s already clear that I’m not going to be able to just add strips every day all year to this block. I’ll soon run out of pieces from which to cut such long strips among the fabrics I have earmarked for this. So far it’s all been scraps from the dresses I made during my thesis work, The Wardrobe Project. I’ll switch to some other block printed fabrics when the strips get too long, but adding a strip every day will also make this thing far too big, too unweildy. A year of stitching every day is a lot of stitching so it makes sense that the finished piece be somewhat monumental, but it also has to be manageable.
I’m considering a few different options: making a separate block for each month and assembling them at the end; starting a new centre somewhere else on the backing sheet and then gradually filling in the gaps (tempting but would lessen the impact of the one big log cabin), or having some of the longer strips be made up of smaller sections, thus allowing myself to spend a week or more building up a single strip. None of these is 100% appealing but right now I’m leaning towards the last option. I’ll give myself until the end of January to decide, after I’ve seen the final size of a month of strips.
The back is looking pretty fun, too:
I’m stitching this with two colours of variegated crochet cotton I picked up in a thrift store. It’s partially a test to see if crochet cotton is strong enough to quilt with (so far I’m leaning towards NO). The twist feels quite different from the sashiko thread I’m more accustomed to using, and I don’t expect it to behave the same way so I’m tying knots rather than relying on the thread to swell and grab itself like sashiko thread does. I sure do love those colour changes though, especially in the orange.
I think you can see where this is going.
This is the beginning of my 2025 daily stitch project.
I’ll admit it: I haven’t finished my 2024 daily stitch. I struggled with doing it every day, fell behind at several times during the year and at the end of the year, despite having many days off and very few plans, I did other things instead. I’m very close to completing it, though, and am on track to be ready to baste it up for quilting by next week, if I can settle on a fabric for the back.
For this year’s edition, I’m again focusing on applied fabric pieces, as my studio is overflowing with these fabrics I block printed for my masters thesis and other projects. I’ll start in the centre and spiral outward in a log cabin pattern. I’m aware that I’m setting myself up for larger and larger pieces each day, the daily time spent growing relentlessly over the year EVEN THOUGH I failed to keep up with just the same small amount of daily stitching last year. But this is Day One so I’m brimming with optimism. It’s going to be a year of COMMIT or DIE TRYING.
On Monday afternoon I took an online workshop on the Quilty Nook (link: The Quilty Nook) with the amazing quilting teacher Heidi Parkes (link: Heidi Parkes) focused on adding texture to your quilts using pintucks and pleats. It turned out to be immensely fun and also maybe has helped me get unblocked on a new line of work I’ve been struggling to find focus with. I immediately realised the potential of this technique for drawing, and Wednesday evening I took a stack of fabric to life drawing club and made some loose contour portraits to try combining my drawing with stitching.
Here’s my first test piece, worked in red sashiko thread on a piece of thrifted cotton bedsheet dyed with tea and iron. This is the pintuck side:
And here’s the pleat side, with its wonderful clots of pooling red in all the tight little corners and cluster points:
Exciting, right? I’ve got around ten more sketches of faces on fabric to work with, plus a few hands and feet. I’m looking forward to seeing where this new method takes me, and of course am already bursting with too many ideas.
I’ve been slammed lately with a big bookbinding commission that I just finished up, but found a bit of time to sew up a new dress for my birthday, a newish tradition. I cut into the good linen with an untested pattern but it worked out okay.
This is a shortened version of the Skyline Dress by Syd Graham (buy the pattern here: Etsy link). I eliminated the bottom tier and lengthened the top tier, and also made the straps fixed instead of adjustable (because the adjustability relies on a bow tied over one shoulder blade, which I know from experience isn’t something I’m going to enjoy wearing). It’s drafted for someone a bit taller than me and on my next one I’ll shorten the bodice. I may go back and shorten it on this version as well.
This is handkerchief weight linen that I dyed with willow leaves and iron. It’s not as drab as it looks in the photos but still pretty drab and I may end up dyeing it again. Worn on my birthday as above, overtop of an ecoprinted cotton gauze Yesterday Dress by Caramiya Maui (shop link: Caramiya Maui) and my indigo dyed toile skirt that I made from an old dress that used to belong to my late mother in law.
Here’s how I wore it again the next day, much more rumpled, over leggings and a safety orange Slocan Tank by Helen’s Closet (shop link: Helen’s Closet). Yeah, I pose the same way every day, I guess.
Overall I’m happy with the relaxed fit and layerability of this and I’ll definitely make it again. I’m already planning a long tiered patchwork version, and will try the short version next time with a trapezoidal skirt instead of a rectangle. I feel a binge coming on!
We haven’t made it outside for a photo shoot yet, but here are a few more shots of my quilt laid out on the kitchen floor. It’s now permanently installed flopped across the living room couch and has already facilitated a few very cosy naps. Even the cat who hates blankets has been spotted asleep on it.
Over the first few days of the new year I finished up the binding and the last bit of quilting on my indigo and gray snowball quilt, and embroidered my signature. Once the weather is a little nicer I’ll go outside and take some better photos and put together a few notes on the construction and inspiration. For now here’s a portion of it laid out on the kitchen floor. It’s already been warming us on the couch and has graced the guest bed for visiting family. I’m so pleased with it and now have a grand plan to go through all of my decades of stashed fabrics around the house and compile the lot of it into blankets. I didn’t need a new hobby but here we are, and I’ve definitely caught the bug.
I’m finished with the quilting on my quilt, all except for one line around the outside edge which I won’t do until after the binding is on. So close to ultimate coziness!