Sunday 8 January 2017

#our52weekproject - week one

Kristin Axtman, the founder of the Brooklyn Haberdashery, proposed an idea on her Instagram feed about doing a 52 week project. I'll let her explain.

Hey Instagram pals! How about a 2017 year-long challenge project? I so enjoyed doing #the100dayproject started by @elleluna, and @brooklynmojo convinced me that 2017 would be better with a project, so I decided to do another challenge. And since the supportive Instagram community was such an integral part of the process I wanted to see if a few more of you all wanted to participate (pretty please with a cherry on top?). Here's the scoop:
🔹The project lasts all of 2017, and each participant posts one time per week for 52 weeks. You may choose to post every week on the same day, if you wish. Or not. Do what is best for you.
🔹Your project can be whatever you like. If you need ideas, look at #the100dayproject. If your first idea sounds daunting, ask yourself if you can make it smaller so you can still participate.The guidelines are more of a suggestion and less of a mandate so modify them to make your participation possible. You don't need our permission and none of us are policing your actions; we just want to support your creative work. Need to start late? Post every other week? Post only on Tuesdays after a full moon? Sure! Don't ask us, just give yourself permission and do it. The project is free and open to anyone, and you don't need to sign up or register. To participate, do the following:
1) choose a project;
2) select your unique hashtag e.g. #52weeksof... ;
3) announce your participation on your IG feed and tag it with your unique hashtag and #our52weekproject;
4) use the hashtag to find others who are participating and support them along the way!

After my quandry earlier in the week, seeing this gave me an opportunity to do something about it. My hashtag is #52weeksofstitchingthecircle. I've drawn circles, about 9.5cm in diameter (I'm using a circle of card that was a label on Jack's cat bed, rather having to cut out a new one) onto Richard Kaufman linen. I'll be using each circle to try out stitches, do a bit of stitch doodling and applique etc The circle is big enough to create a decent-sized sample, without being too big that I couldn't complete one a week on average.

My first circle is in the photos above, along with my workbox for the project and some of the threads I'll be using. For this circle I have started simply by just using running stitch to create little twirls in the circle.