365 Days of Stitches: How to Create a Personal Embroidery Journal

by Steph Arnold

Embroider a motif each day and create a personal stitch journal to commemorate your year with this modern approach to the art of embroidery from expert embroiderer Steph Arnold, founder of Oh Sew Bootiful.
 
Commemorate everything from milestones to simple pleasures by hand-embroidering a symbolic motif each day, creating a stitch journal along the way. With detailed stitching instructions, stitched examples, and helpful advice on choosing floss colors, 365 Days of Stitches provides readers with the tools to jumpstart a daily embroidery practice. Featuring more than 1,000 illustrated motifs, ranging from beach-day themes with palm trees and popsicles to cozy holiday themes with snow globes and mistletoe, and iron-on transfer sheets, crafters of all levels can use this book to create inspired stitch journals full of personal memories and exciting achievements.
 
With guidance from Steph Arnold, readers will learn—or enhance—embroidery skills and stitch techniques using the book’s colorful collection of appealing motifs and templates. Set aside time for yourself each day with this new approach to mindfulness and commemorate events both large and small into a beautiful and unique stitched journal.

Includes Color Images

Genres: Crafts, Reference, Nonfiction

128 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 17, 2023

Reviews

[Nic · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like a cookbook without photos of the final product. It shouldn’t be difficult to stitch and photograph each motif - yet they just offer black and white sketches with color and stitch suggestions for most.

[Tracy Shephard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have seen many of these embroidery samplers on social media, each one personal, telling a story of the individual and their year long journey.

I don't think you need to be an advanced embroiderer to be able to create a beautiful doodle of your days, months and year. It is a wonderful way of highlighting special events, moods and things to remember. It will also be a mindful and relaxing way to spend an hour each day to reflect on how you are and what you doing.

This book is just divine. From start to finish Steph Arnold holds your hand and gives you quality advice, from sorting your threads, choosing your fabric and the size of your hoops.

There is a step by step visual and written instruction for 15 embroidery stitches which is so easy to understand you really cannot go wrong.

I loved that there is also included, 3 sheets of iron transfers for the base design. No need for a fiddly drawn templates just iron onto your fabric and you are ready to go. The templates can also be downloaded for free.

The 3 different patterns are Sun Rays, Pie and Daisy. My favourite is the Sun Rays.

Split into 50 catagories ranging from Christmas to Food, and Sports to Emojis, there are 1,000 motifs. These can be copied onto your fabric to give you a guideline for your chosen themes. Steph Arnold has included some beautiful motifs but also ones that fun and fabulous.

365 Days of Stitches is beautifully illustrated, It is educational and filled with inspiration. I loved the finished samples that are shown, these were created by Jessica McCloy, Stephanie Evans, Jennifer Kennedy Tidd and Sophie O'Neill.

The samples use a 12inch hoop and recommended thread is DMC.

I cannot wait to get started on my year long hoop, I will be updating this post as I complete each section.

Happy Stitching x

[Kelly G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could do this! I get so much joy out of my handwritten journals, and my drawing and doodling skills have vastly improved, plus my sticker game is unmatched. I thought I could upgrade myself to doing an embroidery journal, but much like my attempts at learning how to knit and crochet, my brain and my hands cannot get it together! My fine motor skills are not agile enough for this. The author does a lovely job of organizing stitches and I'll have to agree to disagree that she explains and models how to actually do the stitching in a way that is easy and user-friendly. My eyes glazed over and my mind shut down - I couldn't follow! She too often suggests [only] peach or tan for skin colors of people - yes, creators can choose whatever colors they like, and I wish the author had been more thoughtful about inclusion and diversity. She does a better job on the religion and spirituality pages by including representation from a multitude of beliefs and traditions. My favorite page was the one on astrology, as I was able to draw the 12 zodiac signs plus the planets with relative ease - that'll have to do, 'cause in the words of Aretha Franklin, "ain't no way" I can embroider! I'm grateful to my local library and hoopla for providing access to this book so I could literally check it out before purchasing.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy embroidery and stitching, this book is for you. The author present a very interesting way to display your interests and skills. Simply choose a color of fabric, insert it into a hoop and begin to stitch. According to Steph Arnold, if you can draw it, you can stitch it. The first section of the book teaches or shows the variety of stitches needed to make your sampler. Following that, there are examples of items to stitch, from all kinds of animals, flowers, house plants, birds, cooking, food, drinks., sweet treats, candy. There are motifs for every type of job, holiday and special occasion, hobby, sport, etc. etc. Beneath each motif are the stitches you should use if you choose to put it in your sampler. You can choose the colors on all of them. At the end, there are instructions for stitching letters and handwriting. Lots of fun!

[Daniela Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended up getting my own copy because I will 100% want to do this at some point - even if it becomes more loosely a doodle a day (my life is not mega exciting or complex) instead of a diary.

I do wish she’d had more variety in the thread selection given that there are so many, and that every single design was shown completed on the page with the fabric.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very cute idea, fairly well executed.

The only thing I didn't like was that each page on the left has about 20 motifs, and the pic on the opposite page, they have fabric in a hoop with about 12-15 of the designs completed. Um.... no? Show me all the designs completed, please.

[Barbara Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been using this book all year not for embroidery but for inspiration to make little sketches in my 2025 calendar. Fun to do, esp. because this daily exercise encouraged me that I can create visually rather than always with words!

[Farmer Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Doing an embroidery journal is one of my goals for 2024 and this gave me some good ideas and I'll definitely be coming back to it for motif designs.

[Carol Keller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not sure I’ll ever get around to actually doing this but this is the perfect book for it!

[Citri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I don't have stitching supplies, but this book gave so many ideas on how to set up a yearly stitchboard to keep track of the little joys experienced as time passes.

[Jan Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skimmed this. Cute! Lots of fun ideas.