sashiko is not as easy as it looks...

My standard gift for weddings and christenings has for many years now been a hand stitched sampler, done properly in cross stitch on evenly woven linen, recording the names and dates and decorated with old-fashioned flowers and patterns. I love doing these, even though it takes forever and the technique seems to have falled out of favour with the embroidery fashionistas.

This time, however, I've left it far too late to make a proper sampler, and so I decided to try something different and hopefully a lot quicker. Japanese crafts are very on trend at the moment, so inspired by other people's lovely work on Flickr, I thought I'd have a go at sashiko embroidery. How hard can it be? It's only running stitch...

It's typical of me I'm afraid that I never try anything out properly before jumping in at the deep end, so this, my very first attempt, which should really have gone in the bin, has to be framed and wrapped up and offered as a christening present next weekend. I feel a bit embarrassed about this, but they're old friends, and hopefully we can make up for it with a lot of babysitting.

I think I will stick to my trusty split stitch in future. And I promise not to scoff at Japanese craft techniques for being easy peasy again. Sumimasen.

Flickr credits: 1. Landscape 3, 2. bluesewn-02, 3. spring has come cushion