Blackwork Ball - Intro

Following a flurry of ideas around the end of last year / beginning of the new year, I decided to be ambitions and start a Quaker Ball project using the patterns from the 2025 Botanical Blackwork SAL by The Steady Thread. Now, Quaker Balls were something I had seen before, but didn't remember exactly how they were put together, so I went Googling to find more information about them. Turns out, the name is a bit of a misnomer. 

I found a detailed and informative blog post about them by Sirious Stitches titled Quaker Ball Deep Dive: Cross Stitch Finishing Techniques. From there, I learned that it was a particular design by Denise Harrington Pratt of Amaryllis Artworks called "Quaker Ball" that popularized this construction – and name. The designer named it such because of the Quaker style motifs used. However, the name has stuck, instead, in reference to the way the ball was put together. Sirious Stitches has more information about the origins of the Quaker Ball, so check out their blog post if you want to learn more. 

As such, I decided to call my project Blackwork Ball, since I will be stitching blackwork patterns on mine. However, as Quaker Ball is now the common name for these things, I will also be including this name in my posts so they can be found by people searching for Quaker Balls. 

For the geometric explanation, what is now known as a Quaker Ball is constructed as a truncated cuboctahedron. Now, that is a mouthful and not easy to remember, so I can see why people don't call it that. It is a polyhedron consisting of 6 octagons, 8 hexagons, and 12 squares, all with the same length edges. As a cross stitch or blackwork piece, these polygons are usually stitched with a backstitch (or, I prefer a double running stitch) outline, and then whip stitched together through the outline stitches. When made of fabric and stuffed, the faces puff out, so the overall shape is more like a ball. 

Sirious Stitches also has some outline templates for the polygons in their blog post. However, I wanted a different size, so I made my own. I determined I wanted an edge length of 12 and went from there. I'm sharing my polygon outlines below should you want to stitch a ball of your own using this sizing. You'll need multiples of each shape as listed above, and space for seam allowances between them, so don't use the relative positioning below for your actual stitching. Don't worry about the circle in the hexagon for now; I will explain it later. 

For my Blackwork Ball, I am stitching on an opalescent 18 count Aida named Lotus by BeStitchMe and plain white 18 count Aida with one strand of DMC 550. The octagons and hexagons will be on the colored fabric, and the squares will be on the white fabric. 

Since the octagons are quite large compared to the squares, I decided to supersize some of the fills from The Steady Thread SAL. By that I mean stitching over 2 Aida blocks instead of the typical 1. It turns out that by doing this, my octagons will be the same width and height as the circles in the SAL. Just the corners are a little different since the circles are more rounded. 

For the hexagons, I am planning to stitch a flower motif from the SAL in the center. These will not fit if I stitch them over 2 Aida blocks, so they will be stitched over 1, as typically done on Aida. This, however, leaves more white space than is pleasing to my eye, so I am adding a circle around each flower to take up some of that space. Note that this circle is bigger than the ones in The Steady Thread's patterns. This circle is drawn inside my hexagon outline. If you are stitching something else in the hexagons, you don't need this circle. 

For the squares, I wanted some contrast from the other 2 shapes, so originally I planned to stitch the fills over 1 Aida square for more density compared to the octagons. However, I kept getting put off by the plan, since it will be much faster to stitch if I also supersized the fills on the squares. Then, I noticed several examples of Quaker Balls where the squares used a different color fabric. Now that's an easy way to get contrast! So, I found a different color of 18 count Aida to use for the squares, and now I can supersize the fills here too. 

Since you probably want to see pretty pictures, here's the start of my first octagon. 

Fully Finished Gallery SAL - January 2025

Every month, on the 10th, Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher hosts the Fully Finished Gallery SAL. I had finished stitching a small piece a few days ago, and seeing this SAL pop up was just the push I needed to keep the momentum up and FFO it right away. 

First, the FO ("finished object" - the completed stitching, but not made into anything yet). This was a piece I had started over a year ago. I had wanted to stitch a sampler with an alphabet, but not a large one. I had been toying with the idea of combining parts of the 3 pieces of Be Kind Be Brave Be You, a freebie by Whilst Iris Naps, into one small sampler with just one alphabet. However, I never worked out anything I liked. In the end, I decided to go as small as possible and just stitch the alphabet that I liked. I also took some inspiration from October House Fiber Arts and their Skinny Minis and rearranged the alphabet into a long skinny layout with just 2 rows of letters instead of 3. 

This was stitched on 18 count antique white Aida with 2 strands of an unidentified variegated blue from Vikki Clayton's HDF silks. Even as a small piece, life happened and/or I lost interest after getting about 3/4 of the way through, and it sat for months before I decided a few days ago to finish stitching it. It only took one sitting to do so. 

Then, I decided I should FFO ("fully finished object"; when used as a verb, it means to make an FFO) it so I could share it with the FFG SAL, so I found some quilting cotton for the back and made a pillow. And here it is. 

Project folder #1

Project bags and project folders for cross stitch seem to be all the rage lately. I didn't think they were my kind of thing, but then I started collecting fabrics I liked, and suddenly I wanted to make some project folders. 

This is the first one I made. It started out as a 36 patch of mini charm squares from the Nantucket Summer collection by Camille Roskelley. Originally, I was going to make a square pillow or possibly small wall hanging. Eventually, I decided to make a project folder out of it instead. That's why the layout of squares is 6 x 6 instead of something that makes more sense for a rectangular folder. To make it work for a project folder, I added a piece of fabric to the left side, and folded 1 of the 6 columns of squares to the back. 

Front

Back

I loosely followed the project folder tutorial by Elizabeth Ann Can Stitch on YouTube, but made a bunch of changes. I used ByAnnie's Soft and Stable for the foam, and I made 2 mesh pockets instead of fabric and vinyl pockets. I didn't put a closure mechanism. We'll see if that becomes an issue. The patchwork determined the size of the folder. Theoretically, since the front was 5 columns of 6 squares at 2" each, the folder should have been 10.25" x 12.5" folded (there are 1/4" seam allowances on the top, bottom, and right sides, which are covered up by the binding), and 20.5" x 12.5" unfolded. However, due to inaccurate piecing and also shrinkage when I quilted the layers together, the folder ended up at 10" x 12.25" folded and 20" x 12.25" unfolded. 

Inside

Linking to the Fully Finished Gallery SAL hosted by Rachel the Ten Hour Stitcher. I know it's not cross stitch, but I think it's cross stitch adjacent. 

Off Piste

Hello again. I didn't quite expect to be away from the blog for this long, but it appears time has gotten away from me. 

In July, I started a new project. I was inspired by a color conversion I saw on FrizzyLizzyStitches' Flosstube #61. However, I chose a different pattern. It's not that I don't like the one she's stitching, but it's big, and I decided on something smaller. I picked Patriotic Quaker by Primrose Cottages, and went off piste on the colors, using FrizzyLizzyStitches' palette. 

So far, I've completed one star motif. I think it would make a nice ornament on its own as well. But, I want the whole pillow too, and I'm not about to stitch it twice, so I will continue stitching the rest of the design. 

Sharing with the Smalls SAL hosted by Rachel at the Ten Hour Stitcher, even though this pattern overall is bigger than my definition of a small. But, Rachel says a portion of a big design counts as well, and this project has a theme of going off piste anyway, so I say one motif is a nice delineated small portion of this pattern. 

People's Choice SAL - Small

Serendipitous Stitching hosts a People's Choice SAL, where every month the theme is chosen by her followers. This month, the theme is small. Well, I like smalls, and what a perfect way for me to share some of my past stitching, since most of my finished items are smalls. 

These are designed by Magical Mystery. The one on the left is the 35x35 from June 2020, which is - you guessed it - 35x35 stitches. I stitched it with DMC 4022, which is a variegated thread. The one on the right is the Ornament of the Month from January 2019. It was designed to have a hole in the center, like a donut. I didn't particularly want to cut a hole in the middle of mine, but I liked the effect of the donut. Instead, I decided to sew the front and back layers together in the center so it's flat and stuffed around it. This was stitched with ThreadworX Mosaic (1138). 

Here are some even smaller finishes. The birds are an excerpt from Hands on Design's Love You Too anniversary freebie from this year. I didn't need an anniversary piece, but the birds were too cute to resist, so I just stitched the birds. The covered button is a self-drafted tiny truck. The inspiration was Lori Holt's Sampler in a Jar, and the intention was to stitch a bunch of tiny motifs and put them on covered buttons. However, I had such difficulty pressing the back of the covered button into place that the intention soon fizzled. Actually, even this one doesn't have its back attached. I had to resort to hot glue to hold the fabric in place on the back. The holly berries and leaves are from Part 1 of Fat Quarter Shop’s All The Trimmings mystery stitch along from 2021. Not wanting to stitch the whole piece, I decided to make perforated paper ornaments from the elements. Of course, with me being very bad at finishing things, I never got around to making the other ones. At least this one is finish finished. 

And, I just had to share this little camper again, based on a quilt pattern by Flamingo Toes. You can read all about it in my previous post. 

These are my tiny Jeeps (self-drafted), stitched in 2017 and still yet to be FFO'ed. 

And, this is Sunflower by Lemon Aida, with my own leaves. Apparently I can't help but change things up. Someday, this will become a biscornu. 

Pixelated Camper

I have a finish! I actually finished something, and FFO'ed it too. If you read my intro post, you'll know that it's kind of a big deal because I am very bad at sticking with a project and finishing it. Well, without further, ado, here it is:

This is based on a quilt pattern by Flamingo Toes. I thought it was called Pixelated Camper based on the layout file I downloaded, but now I see it's called Retro Camper Pixel Quilt in the blog post, so I'm not sure what its real name is. Since it's a pixel quilt, the whole pattern is based on squares, so it was easy to convert to cross stitch. I did make a few small modifications and reduced the number of colors because I was having trouble finding a red, a coral, and a pink from my stash that went well together. I stitched it on 14 count clear plastic canvas with 3 strands of DMC. The colors are 3846, 321, Blanc, and 3799. 

Sharing with the Smalls SAL at Mary's Thread. This should qualify for the Fully Finished Gallery at Ten Hour Stitcher too next month, right? 

Hello, (blog) world!

After years of reading from the sidelines, I finally decided to start my own stitching blog. I hope to participate in some link up SALs, but I won't have something to show every month. However, I am on track to have one ready for the end of this month, fingers crossed. I am a stitch when I feel like it person, and I don't stitch very much. I am also very bad at taking projects to completion. So, just to set expectations, my blog posts will probably be sporadic. 

I learned how to cross stitch as a kid, but it was just another random craft that never really stuck. I also had some DMC floss from making friendship bracelets that I kept and for some reason a piece of 18 count Aida. In 2015, I discovered blackwork embroidery, and since I had some supplies lying around, I decided to give it a try. I completed a grand total (yes, I'm being sarcastic) of one sweet from Blackwork Journey's Box of Delights. But hey, at least I completed one in a way that it could be finished rather than having an UFO, right? I eventually turned it into a covered button. 

I had a couple more on and off again projects, including this row of tiny Jeeps that I made up and is not really cross stitch or blackwork. I don't know what it is, if anything. I didn't know about evenweave at the time and painstakingly split Aida squares to stitch it. 

2020 is when you could say I got back into cross stitch and blackwork. It was when I started finding out about Flosstube and Facebook groups and SALs and this world of stitching blogs, as well as hand dyed fabrics and flosses and and and...... I also started starting more projects and not finishing nearly as many (well that last part isn't new). I have learned that I like smalls, maybe because I have more of a chance of finishing them before my attention goes somewhere else. I do have a few larger projects that I couldn't resist, but as you might expect, they have gotten very little progress. 

I have also picked up crochet, though I work on that even more sporadically than cross stitch and blackwork. There are also some quilting projects that are tempting me. You may or may not see some of these on this blog at some point as well.