Stitches I know

I decided recently that I needed to spend more time practicing my embroidery.  I want to use embroidery a lot more on sewing projects but am not a very neat stitcher.  Also it's a good thing to do of an evening, if you are too tired to do anything major.  So it has been great for me he past few weeks as I have been studying as soon as I get home from work, and my brain has been far too dead. to do any sewing.

Back in January, on my birthday I received Jenny Hart's book Embroidered Effects.  It has lots of cool projects in it, and there's a few I wanted to have a crack at.  However as my first attempt to try proper embroidery fell a bit flat, this time I decided to start at the beginning and have a go at the sampler project in the book. This is the result:

I'm not sure whether to frame it or to put a border round it and turn it into a cushion.  What do you think??

It's a bit scruffy in places, but these are my favourite bits:

General frustrations and bad embroidery

I am having a real grrrr humpf week this week.  I've got stress at work (end of the financial year drama), and more stress at home because my college project just won't get out of my head and onto paper.  I know what I want to say but just can't get my brain into essay/report writing mode so I'm sitting staring as a blank screen (well really out of the window), and it's driving me nuts.

Anyway I thought I'd get cracking on my embroidery project, as a way to de-stress plus it's a good pick up put down kinda thing to do.  Only the transfer went squiffy, the fabric I picked is too loose a weave and my stitches look clunky and fat, bleugh!

So I've decided to make it a practice version, so I can play around with stitches and stuff.  But I still feel like I've got the opposite of the Midas touch this week.  What about you?  Do you ever get times when whatever you do seems to go wrong?