I became obsessed with embroidery this past spring. I don’t know what sparked my interest but I really wanted to get into it again. I used to dabble with embroidery when I was younger but totally forgot all of my skills. One goal in my 30 Before 30 Project was to take an embroidery class – I looked high and low for one but couldn’t find anything that fit what I was looking for. I had a few interested friends and we tried to teach ourselves together but it wasn’t the same as being taught by a professional. Finally, I found Gather Here, a local craft store that offers classes and signed up for their embroidery class!

Gather Here is a lovely little shop that reminded me so much of a place I discovered on our cross country road trip in Portland, Oregon called Cool Cottons. Funky, hip, adorable.

Gather Here offers tons of different classes – sewing, knitting, crochet, quilting, embroidery, etc. – and keeps the class size small for extra special attention. The class I took was taught by Virginia, the owner of the store, and was excellent. After taking this class I totally signed up for their quilting class in October because I was so inspired and excited by the class, the store, and the instruction.

The embroidery class had four students including myself. When we arrived, each spot at the table was set up with a sampler of stitches, needle, scissors, and instructions.

Before getting started we all picked out 5 colors of embroidery floss that we wanted to work with. I went Fall-inspired with mine.

The class was 2.5 hours long and the whole time we alternated between learning a ton of great embroidery stitches and chatting/getting to know each other. It was super fun.

Progress on my sampler during the class:

By the time the class was over here is what I had completed:

Our instructor encouraged us all to complete them at home and I was definitely motivated to. Over the last week I worked on it on the train, carried my sampler in my backpack where ever I went, and sat out on the porch a bunch to work on it.

Well yesterday I finally finished my sampler! It took me less than a week after the class and I added some additional stitches. I also embroidered on the labels for each stitch so I could remember each of them.

Finishing my sampler gave me such good practice doing all of the stitches. I love it and can’t wait to do more embroidering!

What do you think? Do you embroider? What are your favorite types of designs?