365 Days of Stitches

Keep a personal embroidery journal: motifs, techniques, templates.

Thread journals are a way of visually reflecting on life events and occasions over one year. Needlecrafters may choose to record events one day a time or one week at time, but whatever approach they adopt, this is a fun and visually appealing way of keeping a diary. Featuring 1000 illustrated motifs, many also demonstrated as stitched examples, 365 Days of Stitches provides readers with the knowledge needed to complete their mindful 365-day project. 

I have seen many of these embroidery samplers on social media, each one personal, telling a story of the individual and their year long journey.

I don’t think you need to be an advanced embroiderer to be able to create a beautiful doodle of your days, months and year. It is a wonderful way of highlighting special events, moods and things to remember. It will also be a mindful and relaxing way to spend an hour each day to reflect on how you are and what you doing.

This book is just divine. From start to finish Steph Arnold holds your hand and gives you quality advice, from sorting your threads, choosing your fabric and the size of your hoops.

There are step-by-step visual and written instructions for 15 embroidery stitches which are so easy to understand you really cannot go wrong.

I loved that there is also included, three sheets of iron transfers for the base design. No need for fiddly hand-drawn templates just iron onto your fabric and you are ready to go. The templates can also be downloaded for free. The three different patterns are ‘Sun Rays’, ‘Pie’ and ‘Daisy’. My favourite is the Sun Rays.

Split into 50 categories ranging from Christmas to Food, and Sports to Emojis, there are 1,000 motifs. These can be copied onto your fabric to give you a guideline for your chosen themes. Steph has included some beautiful motifs but also ones that are fun and fabulous.

365 Days of Stitches is beautifully illustrated, It is educational and filled with inspiration. I loved the finished samples that are shown, these were created by Jessica McCloy, Stephanie Evans, Jennifer Kennedy Tidd and Sophie O’Neill.

I cannot wait to get started on my year-long hoop, I will be updating this post as I complete each section.

Steph Arnold is a lifelong crafter, Product Design graduate, and owner of the UK-based embroidery kit business Oh Sew Bootiful. After realizing that embroidery had a positive effect on her mental health, Steph started her business in 2016 to help others discover the mindful art of embroidery. Check out her embroidery kits at and join her 18.2k followers on Instagram @ohsewbootiful.

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