Meredith's 2026 Crafting

Hopefully I'm firmly back on the crafting horse. I still need to take my sewing machines to the shop, but I'm thinking I'll have another look at my baby one and see if I can nudge her back to normal. I'd like to make some coasters for my friend's birthday on the 21st, and finish my quilt scrap placemats. I might get everything ready and pinned and book one of the library's machines to get them done.

Obviously the other key project is this Ink Circles pattern:


I certainly hope to finish it during January, and I'm not sure what I'll move onto next. There are some other busy Ink Circles patterns I like, or I've got three more of my mix tape cross-stitch patterns still to stitch.

I've been planning to make some placemats too in 2026. We'll be away for the next couple of months, but I hope to work on them later this year. How nice that your library has sewing machines you can rent.

I love the picture up top, and I am loving following your ink circles progress!

I am also excited to see your continuing progress on the ink circles project and whatever else you tackle this year!

Thanks, all! I'm so excited to get the Ink Circles piece done.

>2 dudes22: The one thing I really like after my library renovated is they now have a lot of machines of various sorts (3D printers, laser cutters, button makers, recording studio, podcast studio, VHS to DVD conversion, etc...) you can book time on, including FIVE sewing machines.

A little update from what I could stitch before I had to move the fabric. I'm hoping that after another three days I'll only have the the small motifs left.

Ooh, looks lovely!

My library has a MakerSpace with various machines/tools (including sewing machines) as well and I've been debating booking to try one out there before I delve back into troubleshooting my own. . . ^^;

>6 mabith: Hope you are continuing to make progress. I'm wanting to get stitches in on two projects tonight. I've managed to get a thread in on one of them, but I'm going for a second before I move to the other project because I'm not that tired. I think I can give them both a couple of threads (or the equivalent on the one with a lot of color changes) and make some good progress on a book before I call it a night.

>7 Kalira: Definitely worth booking a little time so the library keeps them anyway!

>8 thornton37814: I am! In my estimate of finishing time I definitely forgot about the various things I needed to do in the day time since I can't work on this at night.

I'm not quite halfway done with the last larger motif (one of the corner circles), so very close to just being on all the small background bits.

The last bigger motif is done! And the small filler motifs for the bottom half of the piece are done! I'm so excited.

I also got a start on the next set of filler bits. I thought, oh maybe I'll hold off on posting until it's all done, only that feels like cursing myself to have some unexpected delay. I have an annoyingly timed appointment tomorrow so probably won't get much stitching done.

>10 mabith: Oooh, looking amazing! Hoping for you to have no delays and fewer obnoxious timing on things preventing stitching!

>10 mabith: Gosh, I love this so much. I can't wait to see the finished product! (I mean, I can, so take your time no pressure, of course.)

>10 mabith: Beautiful! Terrific progress!

Looking good! Can't wait to see the finished project.

She's done! I'm so happy.



Part of me wants to immediately start a similar project, but most of me knows that would probably be a foolish decision (especially for my poor eyes). Definitely time for something on 14 or 16 count!

>15 mabith: It looks fantastic! Congratulations!

>15 mabith: It’s fabulous! I love the colors. Congratulations!

>15 mabith: Oooh, gorgeous! Congratulations! (And a smaller project on bigger fabric sounds like an excellent next plan!)

>15 mabith: Wow, that's beautiful! Congratulations. I can't wait to see what you do next.

>15 mabith: - That's really great, Meredith!

>15 mabith: That is so beautiful - worth every minute you spent on it.

>15 mabith: Woot! That's amazing!

>15 mabith: So gorgeous! And I definitely agree, something simpler on a bigger count will probably make a nice break for you.

That is beautiful--I love the colors you chose! Orange is my favorite color, and I love it in combination with pinks and purples. Do you intend to frame this?

>15 mabith: Congrats on the finish. Perhaps you could do a similar project on the 14 or 16 count!

Thanks, all!

>24 arubabookwoman: I would like to frame it and maybe give it to a friend's mom as a gift. I'd be framing it myself though, so it wouldn't be done in the proper way (though obviously my improper framing doesn't extend to gluing fabric down as it did in past decades). I'll have to think about it!

I've not been entirely neglecting the crafting, though the weather, political happenings, and general new-year-depression have made it so I haven't started stitching. I designed something along the lines of the Ink Circles piece but much, much simpler (and smaller).



And I did a little pattern of a character from an educational computer game I liked as a kid. Was hoping to start tomorrow, but I burnt a fingertip while cooking today so it will have to wait.

>27 mabith: That’s an intriguing design. I bet it will be stunning when it’s stitched!

>27 mabith: - I love geometric-style prints. will you do it in one color or multi-colored?

>27 mabith: designed
How do you do the designing?

>27 mabith: I did get a chuckle out of much, much simpler (and smaller) Perhaps different ideas about "simpler"?!

>28 Charon07: It will scratch the itch so I don't immediately start something else massive with teensy stitches hopefully!

>29 dudes22: I'm not sure about the colors yet. I'm thinking of doing the outlines that are blue on the pattern in one color and then the rest in a single variegated color, but I've also been contemplating if I could pleasingly order it so there's a nice gradient of a single color across the piece.

>30 qebo: I do most of my own pattern creation, and started out just using graph paper. Then used digital graph paper in photoshop but now I have an older cross-stitch specific program to make the editing easier. If I'm converting an existing image into cross-stitch I still use photoshop first since you can stack up multiple layers and just alter the transparency on the top graph paper layer.

>31 SassyLassy: Ha, well, not simple compared to what I usually stitch honestly but definitely simpler than the piece I finished in January!

>27 mabith: Ooh, I love the look of that design and can't wait to see how you execute it. Also, super impressed at your designing skills!

>33 MickyFine: Thanks!

Got back to stitching, which my burnt fingertip (the one that gets the most stress during cross-stitch, of course) is now cranky about, but no regrets. Maybe tomorrow I'll put band aid on.

I'm doing my niche childhood computer game character, since it's fairly small.



I got a lot of the main outline done. Though as you can see at the bottom, a mistake meant some unpicking and restitching. Normally I'd just alter the pattern but with a base image like that minor changes make a big difference.

Finished my silly robot cleaning equipment! I already have a pattern made for my second favorite robot from the game, so I might go ahead and stitch that next.

So cute! Hope your finger’s all better now.

>36 mabith: Cool! That turned out great!

>37 Charon07: Thanks! And yes, all healed!

>38 scaifea: I slightly question if I was right to keep where the dark grey is used for the outlines as in the original image, whether that was just a consequence of the moving screenshot, but oh well! I'm pretty happy with the translation into stitching.

Finished my other robot! I won't do the other three in the game (at least not now), as that would maybe be excessive, and these two were my favorites.



I'm going to do some color experiments on that geometric pattern I made, but I'll be trying to start stitching it fairly soon.

>40 mabith: So cute!

>40 mabith: It was fun to do something so nostalgic!

I've been fiddling with color options for my geometric piece, and while I have no started stitching it with a lovely hand-dyed variegated silk (Caron Waterlilies 89) that I'll use for the whole piece, I thought I'd share the potential future ideas.

First, I took a foolishly long time to realize there are stripes going from upper left to bottom right (somehow this lapse is extra annoying because that's always my first stitch for each cross). I use a rainbow option here because I just like a rainbow and also once the any colors are down in my program I can easily swap them out for others.



The trouble with a rainbow and that configuration is you just end up with so much yellow which can be tricky visually depending on your fabric and it's not my ideal dominant color! I do think it would be nice for my other consideration of a selection of greens in a particular shade sequence.

So then I took a more random approach which minimizes the yellows and reds.



I'm not totally sure I like that or not, but I also think I've been looking at the pattern for too long. Luckily since I decided I did have a nice variegated color on hand to use (the key factor being how much of it I had), I don't have to consider other options for the time being. The keen eyed viewer may note a spacing error which is fixed on one version of this pattern above but hadn't yet been fixed on the other when I saved that image.

>43 mabith: I can really see how choosing colours could occupy a person for hours. Now you've got me contemplating placement in a purely theoretical way of course. My immediate thought was shades of one colour for the stripes. I'm also a huge fan of random.

DMC at least make it easy if you want to do a six-color gradient, because there actually aren't many that are really properly the same hue! Half the time I look at their official 'color families' document, pull out the actual floss and there will be one blue that's far more purple than the other four in the sequence or a slightly cooler red amongst warm ones etc... It's very frustrating. I did pick out a run of greens for a previous piece, so I've got it on deck, as it were.

Always makes me wonder if they're not updating that enough with the dye lots as they sometimes have large shifts or doing enough color vision testing of the people in charge of the families chart. Certainly it's not passing the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue test.

I do like that random one quite a lot. You're right about the other one with a lot of yellow. I started with the yellow on the one I'm doing, and it can be hard on the eyes. I worry the patterns won't be as obvious.

I also like the second best. But you could also do a gradient that starts with yellow in one corner and ends with green in the other so that the yellow wouldn’t predominate.

>46 dudes22: The more random arrangement would also be nice for using a variety of hand-dyed threads. I think it's probably a pattern I'll make at least twice.

>47 Charon07: True! Either way if it's a rainbow I think I feel short-changed since I love both green and purple. Nice for another gradient at least!

Progress! I'm stitched the design parts in Caron Waterlilies 89 with the outlines in a dark teal (DMC 561, which I haven't added yet).

Though I am now fairly convinced that one skein of the Caron won't be enough. I'm not sure I want to buy another skein as I'll have to order it online and like as not the dye lot will have changed too much to match. Hopefully it would still be close enough to look good with the first skein, but sometimes there are wild shifts. $8 for the floss and $3-4 for shipping just feels like too much. I so miss having a local needlework shop (for many reasons). For now I'll be strategic in the order I continue stitching the piece, keeping symmetry in mind.

>49 mabith: That’s lovely!

>50 Charon07: Thanks! I'm really happy with it (the floss is a little lighter and more saturated than it appears in the picture on my computer but who knows about on other screens!).

Lots of progress!

>52 mabith: That's looking so lovely!

Oh, wow, it's looking great!

Fantastic!

Thanks all! I haven't had as much stitching time the last few days but it's going well (yesterday I was FORCED to go to a cat cafe and snuggle a very sweet black cat and then had to spend a lot of the rest of the day being sad I couldn't adopt him).

>56 mabith: I love cat cafes! There's a new one opening near me soon and I can't wait to visit.

>52 mabith: I like the greens.
>56 mabith: cat cafe
We have a newish one here but I'm afraid I'd be tempted.

>49 mabith: Cross Stitch & Crafts in Johnson City, TN ships at the actual postage cost. They may not have the full collection of Waterlilies but they do have some. It might save a little if you decide to go that route; however, I agree with you on the dye lot. It's hard to know if it will be the same.

>57 lauralkeet: >58 qebo: I was a little unsure about the cat cafe at first, but it's done pretty well and I'm glad they're busy. They have cats from a couple different rescues, including the one I got my cat from, so it's nice to support them a bit. It was my second visit, going with a woman in my book club and it's been nice to have some more one on one time with her too. We're going to try to make it a regular thing.

>59 thornton37814: Good to know! It's so hard when you can't see the colors in person. Which did make me do a wider search and there is a shop in a town near me that I didn't know about, so I'll have to plan on a trip on a good day. I am, luckily, feeling a little more more like the floss will last the whole piece now. Those two more densely stitched squares are about 23% of all the Waterlilies stitching. Still proceeding with caution though!

Moving along with it! Should go more swiftly from here on out.

such neat work, and beautiful colors.

>56 mabith: A former colleague of mine and her husband made the mistake of going to a cat cafe near the end of the day. At that point, the cats and kittens are largely all sleepy and snuggly as they're played out. They adopted a kitten who turned out to be a bit of a hellion, which they didn't suspect because of the end of day sleepiness, lol.

The pet supply store we go to usually has adoptable cats/kittens roaming the store and often the only thing that keeps me from bringing one or more cats home is the knowledge that our current cats (particularly mine) would HATE it.

>62 al.vick: Thanks!

>63 MickyFine: Ooh yeah, I'd definitely want multiple visits with a cat if possible. I'd also be worrying about the level of both attention and freedom to hit a TV that a cat-cafe cat would expect. I was surprised my favorite little guy was still there after a month, as he was very friendly, playful, and snuggly on both visits, so seems an ideal pet. I do hope they'll still be open the next time I'm looking for a cat, as having to adopt my last one with zero idea how she'd be in my home was stressful (she turned out to be perfect for me, thank goodness).

I used every last scrap of the variegated thread and here's how things stand:



I did end up ordering another skein of that floss, and two other colors that might work with it. The variegated green heavy floss I already have are too yellow in tone or too bright to fit in well. Nothing I can do on it until the floss arrives anyway, so I'll try to pick something to start on a smaller frame tomorrow.

>65 mabith: That's looking so great! Crossing my fingers the ordered floss blends well.

I'm really liking that.

>65 mabith: I really like that as it stands in its minimalist way.
Trying to get colours to tone is absolutely maddening, but it can often lead to yet more projects!

>65 mabith: Beautiful!!

>66 MickyFine: >67 dudes22: >69 scaifea: Thanks!

>68 SassyLassy: It would be interesting to do a similar pattern (but maybe in a completely symmetrical square), also on white fabric, where you start the outermost parts in white and and just gradually got darker towards the middle (but it would still be a fairly light color).

My new floss arrived and that shade is slightly less saturated than the previous dye lot that I used, but I think it will be okay.

I've been stitching one of my mix tape designs and I'll actually keep working on that for a few days. My nephew is staying with me so I can take him to a boy scouts thing in my area. The mix tape has a bunch of fill areas that I can work on without having to read a pattern.

Tonight we played a bunch of card games (he taught me gin rummy), so not much room for stitching. He'll be at his event from 8-4 tomorrow though, so I should get some in then.

The mix tape so far!



My nephew has been retrieved, so I could immediately switch to the geometric piece, but I think I'll finish up the central black fill first. Hopefully then my brain will feel more recovered. Between my usual chronic pain brain fog, new perimenopause brain fog, and recently discovered iron deficiency, I feel I'm more than usually likely to make a mistake on the geometric piece. Plus I hate doing fill sections so it seems best to do this fill on the mix tape, then lovely geometric pattern following, and then the red fill on the tape vs having all the fill left to do at once.

I'm having my first iron infusion on Friday so hopefully that helps.

Oh this is the full mix tape pattern by the way. I designed six together with different titles and colors (the others are For My Love, Road Trip Jams, Best Songs Ever, Mom's Favorites, and For My BFF).



I have altered some of the X patterns since I made this image, but realized the red Xs must seem very odd without the title of the tape. I worked so hard trying to get them varied and like you're honestly frustrated and just drawing on the tape to get out frustration. Normally I'd stress about them not standing out enough against the black in the stitched pieced but it's kind of the point.

>72 mabith: I'll have to admit that brings back memories from the 70s!

>74 thornton37814: I feel like cassettes cover such a long period of nostalgia. I was still making mixtapes for my truck in 2005. Pocketsize and not super delicate and no skipping... Underrated technology.

It's finished! I'm quite happy with it, though I regret not editing one element (flipping the orientation on the second largest design areas on the right side, which are currently in the same orientation as the ones on the left, with the circular center designs both in the bottom triangle, I think it would be more pleasing reversed).

Finished just in time since now I've got my niece staying overnight in between two girl scouts events and I can go back to the fill areas on the mixtape if I have stitching time.

>76 mabith: This is gorgeous! I really admire your design and stitching talent.

>76 mabith: Oh, so cool!! I love it!

>76 mabith: That turned out so beautifully!

>76 mabith: - That turned out so nice! I love geometric designs and also blue and green.

Thanks, all! It was a really fun stitch and a great design exercise for my brain. I might do a little series of them.

It took longer than I wanted to finish up my mix tape, but it's finished!



I've started another version of the geometric piece from above, but with a gradient of greens in the diagonal stripe formation, plus a few minor alterations just for fun.

>82 mabith: This is so cool!

>82 mabith:

Wonderful stitching -- you all (in this group) are inspiring me. I want to get a quilt done by July when my (first) great grandson is due to be born.

>82 mabith: I love it!!

>83 Charon07: >85 scaifea: Thanks!

>84 rowendelle: Thank you and totally agree, everyone in the group is so inspiring.

Here's what I've got so far on the green gradient version of my geometric design. I've been using the next darkest color for the outlines of the fill designs, but I quickly realized this was a bit of a mistake, as some of the colors are quite close and the way color perception changes depending on what other colors are nearby has such a strong effect. By the time I thought I should have had the outline shapes as a gradient in the opposite direction, with the darkest color outlining the lightest it already felt like too much unpicking to do.

In this version I've inverted the design area in the two largest squares, so it won't have such a heavy central focus. I like the original way I did it, but I wanted to compare how this looked.

I sort of regret not switching gears on the gradient, but I'll still enjoy the result. I am slightly anxious about the fact I thought I had extra skeins of the two colors with the highest stitch counts, but it turns out I don't. Fingers crossed the dye lots haven't changed too much.

>82 mabith: Love the mix tape. My husband used to make them for me when we first got together and he did use C90 cassettes. I don't know what the favoured love token for young people is now...