Since September 2020, I’ve been leading a group of our guild members on a journey building Personal Embroidery Journals. I share how-to videos, inspirational emails and page based ideas on building a personal journal.

I’ve been following Trish Burr’s mini journal project with great interest and I have been recently introduced to Amina and her blog, Stitchfloral. Amina has been making some amazing journals using previously finished pieces. Trish Burr has designed beautiful patterns for each page of her journal which will be 12 pages when it is complete. All of these patterns are free, including the instructions and pattern to make the journal.

To learn more about Amina and Trish’s projects, please check out their websites:

https://stitchfloral.blogspot.com/search/label/embroidery%20journal

https://stitchfloral.blogspot.com/2020/04/embroidery-journal-repurposing-old.html

https://trishburr.com/2020/05/02/free-mini-embroidery-journal/

I would like to mix these two concepts together and create a journal that has some new projects, some older, finished projects, and also possibly orphan projects (old WIP’s, UFO’s, class pieces that were not finished, etc). The journal can be as many pages (or as few) as you like. Individual pages are made first and the last step will be making covers and assembling the journal.

This is a totally self directed project. If you want to follow Trish’s design exclusively – you can do that! If you want to explore different embroidery techniques such as blackwork or sashiko, you can do that! If you want to repurpose some of your older works – you can do that too!!

Making a journal is also a wonderful way to explore learning new embroidery techniques.

Let’s try to build these journals purely from stash! Here’s the perfect quote from Amina’s blog on materials – she says it perfectly!!

“So why not dig into your stash and try and use all the materials, thread, ribbons, fabrics that you have stored at home but never found a way to use them? Why not take your old works and make pages for a little cozy book? :)”

I will send communications regularly with additional details, patterns and other inspirational ideas/patterns that can be incorporated into to your journal.

This is as a long term project (at least a year), we will see how it goes!

Happy stitching!