Sashiko Progress

At the start of the year I prepped a bunch of fabrics to sew with sashiko stitching on them. The intent for these was that one day there would be enough to be a set of classroom white board cleaners. I had patterns drawn on a bunch of red and blue ones to stitch at church in Japan, which I did. 

Rachel even asked to do one while she sat in church next to me one morning. Can you tell which is hers? 

We did however, find that going to church was quite a mission in Japan. For a number of reasons, so for the latter half of our stay, we did home church as a family. This was actually great for us, but not so great for the sashiko progress. 

Since coming back I've finished off the ones I had drawn patterns for. I've got 20 finished now, which is almost a class set! 

The remaining fabrics are a lot of blue, which I'm worried slightly about how to trace patterns on to, since it's on the darker side. But I'll give it a go none the less. There are definitely patterns that I want to try again - mostly with better thread colour choices (not like the purple set), so they should be pretty easy to follow even if the lines are hard to see. 

The other thing I did work on in Japan was this cross stitch. 

Bad night time photo of the finished work, unframed 
"Touching the Autumn Sky"

I packed it because it had was the project that would take the smallest amount of space and yet give the largest amount of sewing time. It was a thing I had started over ten years ago, after Sophie was born, or maybe was 1? I don't know. I've never been taught cross stitch properly, and when I started I made lots of mistakes. But the friend who gave it to me had really good intentions. I figured if I was ever going to get it done, it was in Japan or not at all. 

I did get most of it done in Japan (progress shot here), but doing so also gave me a huge shoulder injury from excessive stitching. Also, even though I've finished it and it looks beautiful, it's also kinda useless. Cross stitch is definitely not my thing. Time to give away all of the other ones I've got in a box (not bought, just gifted over the years). I'm ready to face the reality that I'll never willingly stitch those and they are better off going to someone who will.