Do you know what an “ear worm” is? It’s a song or sometimes a phrase or saying that keeps running through your head. I think the term is usually used when it’s music that you can’t get out of your head.

I won’t mention any particular songs, because I wouldn’t want to do that to you!

But every time I’ve picked up my Sea to Stitch project from this book by Elisabetta Sforza, that little tongue-twister pops into my head: She sells seashells by the seashore. This morphs into She sews seashells, and then Seashows soshells and Sheshews sheshows… and on it goes, knocking about in my head in every possible configuration.

So far, I’m liking the seashells! There are a few little bits that I wish I had paid more attention to, perhaps adjusted a little, but overall, the letter is coming along pretty well, and I’m infatuated with the shells.

I’ve been steadily plying the needle each day for at least 20 or so minutes on my “Stitch Fun 2021″ sampler – a completely random, no-rules (except a few), year-long stitching exercise.

Through the first weeks of January, I had some frustrating moments which I chalk up mainly to the set-up of this piece. The linen I’m using for it is quite a narrow strip – under 8″ wide, just under a 6” wide stitching width. I really should have planned better, but I was using a strip of fabric I already had cut and it seemed a good way to use it up.

If you’ve ever stitched on a piece of fabric that’s really too small, you know it can be frustrating. If you’re trying to use a hoop, you have to use one that’s smaller than you’d like, so you have to move it around on the embroidery – and that takes time and its own level of annoyance.

If you just barely fit the stitching area into a barely-fitting hoop, it makes for uncomfortable stitching. Everything feels cramped! You don’t have enough fabric on the sides to make adjustments in the hoop easily. And as you approach the perimeter of your stitching, which is being rudely encroached upon by your too-small hoop, you have to … uh… jump through hoops to get your needle in and out of the fabric on the very edge. And then don’t even mention having to turn the work over and fight with ending the thread for stitches crammed right up against the edge of the hoop! What a pain in the …!

Yes! You get the idea!

I decided to solve the problem on my SF2021 sampler once and for all, and then I ditched the hoop and substituted another solution altogether. This is how I solved my cramped-hoop problem – and this is how you can solve similar problems, when you need to make your fabric bigger, to fit a hoop or frame more comfortably.