Counted Blessings Project

This is where I will chronicle my progress in the Counting My Blessings (a group stitch along project). We will all be embroidering 100 one inch squares with examples of how we are blessed. When trying to figure out a name for this blog I came across the Cherokee Blessing which is under my blog title. I thought is was so beautiful and since my husband and our son are part Cherokee and I count them both as the blessings I am most grateful for it seemed natural. I am new at embroidery and excited to see how it all unfolds!

Monday, April 26, 2010

Drawing and Outlining My Squares





I followed Amy's idea on her Counted Blessings Blog and drew the grid on my fabric with a ruler which was one inch wide. I used a transfer pencil that will come out with water in case I made a mistake. Now I am going to stitch all the squares in black using a back stitch. This way there is no worry that my squares will start to fade and I will loose the lines. I plan on finding an ornate old frame which I will paint black so thought the black floss would look nice.

Getting Started

This weekend was busy with a sewing class at our local quilt shop so I haven't done much on the sampler yet but did get my fabric ready. I was not sure if I needed to wash the linen first as I loved the feeling of the new crisp linen and was afraid I would loose some of that plus have some fading of the fabric. Since I plan on framing it and never washing it after stitching then I wasn't sure if a pre-wash was necessary. My quilt teacher Dea said definitely shrink it first. She made a good point in stating that sometime in future years after I am gone whoever ends up with it may need to wash and then it will shrink but the stitching won't so better to do it now than take a chance on it being ruined later. Makes sense but I still didn't want to do a whole load of wash for one piece of fabric.
While looking around the internet on embroidery sites I came upon the site Needle 'N Thread. It is filled with great info for beginners regarding buying and preparing your fabric to embroider. (There is also a video library of stitches.) They have a "recipe" for shrinking your linen with several boiling water/cold water baths in the sink. No soap or washing machine needed. It is a perfect and quick solution! If you go to the site scroll about half way down the page dated dated April 15, 2010 with the title Fabrics for Surface and Tips on Linen .
Thank you Mary Corbet for posting such valuable information!

Thursday, April 22, 2010


I was at Hobby Lobby this week and found the most beautiful carmel colored linen on sale for 50% off. I purchased a yard thinking I could make a few nice kitchen towels and embroider them with the new Sublime Stitching kitchen transfers that showed up this week :). But the linen is telling me it wants to be used in this project and not cleaning up dirty counters, and so it will be.