Handstitching vs Garment Sewing

Heidi Boyd Fox Softie Kit.  Handstitched by me.


Hello!

I've loved all your comments about my last post on the origin of the name of my blog.  It sounds like a few of you have your own stories to tell about your blog names--maybe you'll write a post about your blog names?


Olympus Flower Sashiko in turquoise on white

Soooo....today I want to chat a bit about handstitching little items vs machine stitching garments.  I started to get into handstitching at the end of last year.  First it was the sashiko and then this summer I started stitching embroidery hoops and softie kits.  When I was a teenager I did a lot of cross-stitching, mainly Suzy Zoo kits, often times on family trips in the car back and forth from NJ to Myrtle Beach.  I have done a smattering of cross-stitching since then, but not much.


Heidi Boyd "Hedgies" Whimsy Kit

This week marks 11 years since I moved into my townhome.    Starting this fall I have found myself spending loads of time in the living room when I never had before.   My townhome has two levels and in the fall/winter they seem to consist of tropical warmth upstairs and arctic chill downstairs.  This fall has been the warmest it's been for awhile and I've been spending a lot of time in the living room.  It feels great to actually *use* this room.    I've been burning fake logs in the fireplace like crazy and probably burned more logs in the past few weeks than I have in the past few years combined.

Olympus bunnies kit.  For whatever reason, this was really hard for my phone to photograph.

I've found the handstitching to be quite satisfying in a number of ways that garment sewing is not.

I love that I can sit on the sofa in my living room, or in a waiting room, or anywhere at all, and stitch.

If I am tired at the end of the day, and still want to feel creative, I can stitch a line of sashiko and it's no big deal.

There is no fitting involved, just stitching.

Heidi Boyd "Fox" Whimsy Kit

I've been using pre-printed sashiko kits, or the Heidi Boyd hoop kits or softie kits, and so there's really no points where I can get totally lost, veer off course, or fail.  It's just stitch-stitch-stitch.  If I don't like how a line of sashiko stitching looks, I can easily pull it out.  If I don't like how I stitched on something in the kit, I can easily undo it and re-stitch it.   If I don't like how I cut out a piece of the kit, the pieces are so small, it's easy and straightforward to cut out another piece. So, the frustration level is pretty low.

And I'm still learning things too.  Last week I learned the lazy-daisy stitch in embroidery.  It was fun to learn a new technique, and it didn't take a long time to learn it.


Heidi Boyd "Chickadees" Whimsy Kit.  This is my favorite so far. It was the most complicated and intricate of the Whimsy hoop Kits.

Compare that to garment sewing, where it basically has to be done in my sewing room, where I do not have the energy to sew after work, where if I make a mistake, it could mean cutting out the whole thing all over again, where the frustration level, especially with fitting, can be high...welll....

Before attaching the fox head to the fox body

I'm not giving up on garment sewing at all!  but the hand-stitching is a really nice and surprising complement to my garment sewing.


With greetings from my living room...

Be well!