Take a stitch Tuesday or a stitch a day

Last year I came across the Pintangle blog by Sharon B. Now I'm not a Pintangler or one who does Pintangle but I do like the idea of it and the finished look. This isn't what drew me to Sharon's blog.  TAST is what caught my eye. What is TAST you may be asking yourself and I'll tell ya what it is and what I think it is. TAST is basically Take A Stitch Tuesday and it's a hand embroidery challenge that started way back in 2007. That's a lot of years of stitching. The idea of the challenge is to work as many of the proposed stitches as you can or want. Each stitch is announced on Tuesday mornings. Imagine that! LOL. Now you know where the name came from.

I found this challenge partway through last year but decided not to join at the time. I've thought about it every once in a bit but never really thought too hard. A new year and challenge started this January but it wasn't on my radar at the time. I've been drawn to hand work again so this challenge resurfaced in my mind. Even though it started like 14 weekly stitches ago I don't mind. It looks like they are only on stitch 10 so that's even better.  It's only a stitch a week and I'm sure I can catch up. The challenge will be to keep motivated for the rest of the year. Now that's the real challenge.

This is what I plan on working my stitches on. I bought this embroidery hoop from a thrift store I'm pretty sure and I've held onto it for several years. I believe this one is a quilting hoop but it will work fine for this project. I am using some of my ugly to me fabric for my base. I've actually got two layers of the fabric hooped up. They way I see it the fabric won't matter because I plan on covering the whole thing in stitches. I did sketch out the word LOVE for the center. I thought that might be a nice word to work around.



I also came across One Year of Stitches and Buttons over on lil blue boo and I plan on working on this one at the same time as the TAST challenge. This challenge seems more freeform. I need to read a bit more but I believe this one is just to add a button and stitch a day but I don't think there is a specific stitch. It's mostly just do what you want and what fits your hoop and project.

This time I am using an oval frame with the word BELIEVE. I'm still using the same farmhouse blue fabric doubled as my base. I have plenty of embroidery floss, buttons, and beads to keep me stitching for most of the year at least. What a fun way to use up more of my stash and to do something that I enjoy.

Do you have any year long crazy to most people projects you are working on this year?