Gosh, there are loads of loose ends this week, so I’m going to tie them up here today! Mostly, this is just website news and some other tidbits.

First, if you ordered Jo Butcher’s new book, Where Meadows and Gardens Grow, you are not going to be disappointed! Wow! Such a beautiful book!

Today, we’re not really chatting about embroidery on the cutwork project we’ve been discussing lately. Instead, we’re going to go on a little detour.

I often find myself meandering into diverging paths, away from embroidery, when I’m trying to figure out solutions for tools, work station set-up, and the like for larger projects.

Oh, who am I kidding? Not just for larger projects – for any projects! I like the tool side of embroidery, I admit it. And given the opportunity, I will explore toolish ideas like a dedicated hound dog, if my interest is piqued and I think there’s value to the tool or it offers a unique or efficient solution.

I’m not into tools that are beautiful but completely impractical. I like tools that do their job well, and if they can be beautiful to boot, well, that’s just icing on the cake! When it comes to tools, I love nothing better than those that are both practical and beautiful.

Today’s lesson for the Bee-Jeweled Pincushion is rather short and sweet!

The longest stretch of stitching on this project is in the next lesson, where we tackle the bead embroidery. Oooooh, fun! I love sewing on beads!

But in the meantime, you’ll want to get all the floss embroidery finished. I always try to leave bead embellishment on any particular area on a project for the last, because it’s sometimes a pain in the neck to embroider with floss around beads. The floss can catch on the beads, and I always figure why put up with those little frustrations that slow you down while you’re stitching?

So today, I’ll tell you how to stitch these very very very simple little floss flowers across your flower line.

Lots of little loose ends to tie up today here in the studio and on the website. Bear with me! It’s been a crazy, wild ride this week and last on this end of the stick. Golly!

But first, today, I want to show you, calmly, some bits of stitching that will most likely finish up my coverage for quite a while of the whitework linens we’ve been talking about. (Well, I don’t say that with certitude, but maybe more with hope. Remember, they’re not my project!)

Last week, we chatted about setting up this Massive cutwork embroidery project – an altar linen (three of them, actually) – that’s about 7.5 inches high x 18 feet long.

I thought we had found the solution for the transfer of the repeat designs across the approximately-18 feet of linen.

Boy oh boy, was I wrong…