I’m a firm believer that people need hobbies.

For those of us who stitch, we can safely say that embroidery (or cross stitch or needlepoint or whatever kind of stitching we do) is our hobby. For many of us, it might be our only hobby. But for many of us, it might be one among several hobbies.

Over the years as I’ve corresponded with lots of embroiderers around the world, I’ve noticed that many of us pursue various textile-related hobbies. I’ve noticed that many of us have other hobbies across the whole gamut of the visual arts. And I’ve noticed that many have hobbies that go beyond the visual arts and into completely different realms of creativity.

We tend to be hobby-rich people. And I think that’s a good thing!

Although I consider embroidery my main hobby (and my profession – I think it can be both!), and although I have a couple other hobbies I indulge in pretty regularly, I felt like I needed (yet another) hobby outside of embroidery.

Strangely enough, my hobbies seem to be seasonal. One of my late-in-the-year hobbies is needle felting.

This morning, to start your week off on an entertaining note, I thought I’d share a short, vintage video about the making of linen.

The video is from BBC Archive on Facebook, but you don’t have to have a Facebook account to watch the video.

If you’re a linen lover, a textile enthusiast, or if you like vintage cinema and the like, you might find this video as entertaining as I do!

There are not very many resources for Richelieu embroidery these days, but the technique is enjoying a revival of interest, which is a good thing!

Richelieu is a form of whitework, where portions of the design are cut away from the ground fabric, creating a lace-lake effect. “Brides” or “bars” created from the embroidery thread connect between the edges of the cutwork to add stability and are part of the design feature.

On Monday in our session on Sweet Marguerite, I demonstrated how to withdraw threads from the linen ground fabric and re-weave the edges of the fabric so that we can finish the accent linen with a decorative hemstitch.

Today, we’re going to turn the hem and miter the corners so that the only one step remains to finishing the linen: the decorative hemstitch. Hurray!

If you are a member on Patreon, you already have this information that we’re covering today available to you in PDF format. By the way, for members who didn’t catch the latest news over on Patreon, I’ve organized some “collections” in the Needle ‘n Thread community there, so you can easily find each post and PDF for the Stitch Snippets and other projects.

Let’s get this hem stuff finished, shall we?

Here in the wilds of the Kansas cornfields, we are kitting. We’ve been kitting all summer long.

Recently, we’ve kitted Stitch Snippet kits, we’ve kitted the Leafy Tree project, we’ve tentatively kitted (most of) Jacobean Sea and Goldwork Rose, we’ve kitted thread packs… and we’re almost kitted out.

But we have a few more kits to put together – and these are kits that we plan to use this autumn and pre-holiday season for a couple local workshops and for some local retail events associated with town festivals and whatnot.