Hi everyone

Last month it was yellow and grey. This month it’s the blues, in a good way.

Pantone chose Illuminating and Ultimate Gray as its colour of the year for 2021. But on a more textile note, Robert Kaufman has selected Horizon as its Kona Cotton Solids colour for this year and Etsy has chosen sky blue.

Blue is a perennially popular colour for modern hand embroidery. There’s Wild Kelp, along with (top to bottom, left to right) Wild Coral, Anatomical Dragonfly, Snowflakes, Anatomical Flying Fish, Birds on a Wire, Wintry Tree Sampler, Deco Alphabet, Shoal, Teapot Sampler, Hanging Hearts, Anatomical Butterfly and Tartan Scotties.

You’ve used Scandi Birds to create framed embroidered art for friends, wedding ring cushions and special occasion hoops by adding names and significant dates to the design. It’s one of five Scandinavian-style designs – along with Scandi Flowers, Scandi Fruit, Scandi Hearts and Scandi Tea – that are now available as the Scandi Designs bundle.

I’ve also created a Modern Jacobean bundle of five designs – Sweetsong, Regality, Oakenfold, Shylock and Burnesque – that put a modern twist on traditional Jacobean embroidery. These have an abundance of interesting and fun stitches, some of them a little unusual.

These and many others are available as pattern bundles at a reduced rate in the Bundles section of my Etsy shop.

The Brooklyn Museum has created “an intimate look at a selection of costumes from The Queen’s Gambit and The Crown”. It’s a virtual exhibition that explores the role fashion plays in the lives of female leads and how it helps bring iconic stories to life.

Victoria Richards has embroidered more than 200 “realistic and 3D-looking landscapes”.

Cel Castellá embellishes her illustrations with embroidery, be it a curious cat, Coni or Agus.

Laura Preston switched to quilting when she took to the road and could no longer create large-scale oil paintings.

This video of kids threading needles made me laugh, especially the little girl who licks her needle.

Keep stitching, Kelly

PS. Forever blowing bubbles.