Keeping An Embroidery Journal – A Chat With Sophie O’Neill

Today, I have a special guest who will share lots of helpful information about getting started with an embroidery journal. If you love a way of remembering sentimental memories and everyday events, you’ll love embroidery journaling.

Sophie O’Neill of The Stir-Crazy Crafter is an embroidery artist known for her beautiful embroidery journals. In this interview, we talk about all things journaling: we discuss what it is, the benefits of keeping one, making time for stitching, and some helpful ways to get started creating your own journal.

I enjoyed learning more about Sophie and her work, and I think you will, too.

Keeping An Embroidery Journal: An Interview With Sophie O’Neill of The Stir-Crazy Crafter

Please share a little bit about yourself! When did you get into embroidery journaling, and what about it interested you?

My name is Sophie and for 5 years straight, I embroidered an icon representing every day of my year. In late 2019, I decided that I wanted to start my very own Embroidery Journal in 2020 to track my new hotel management role.

At the time, I had never embroidered! So I started teaching myself to embroider using kits I found online. Shortly after, I began to develop my own patterns – which tied in quite nicely when it came time to design my own daily icons for my embroidery journal. 

What is an embroidery journal, and what are the benefits of keeping one?

An Embroidery Journal is a project where you embroider an icon representing every day of your year. So by New Years Eve, you’ll have embroidered 365 icons that represent your year!

Your embroidery journal will be filled with icons representing not only the highs of your year, but also the lows. You could embroider a slice of pizza if you went out for Italian dinner, a snowflake if it started snowing, or even a teardrop if you had a bit of an emotional day. Your embroidery journal will capture it all!

I’ve found that there is nothing cooler than looking back on a completed Embroidery Journal. Seeing all 365 icons contained within a 12 inch embroidery hoop is truly something else! And unless you share their meaning – only you will know what they each represent!

Do you find yourself stitching every day, or do you keep a different schedule for making your art?

While I recommend figuring out what works best for a person, I currently update my Embroidery Journal every 1-2 weeks. I find that this works best for me as I can sit down with a cup of tea and embroider a few icons at a time.

However, this is quite a bit easier for me as I’m no longer embroidering daily icons, I’m now selecting 7-14 days a month to embroider within a smaller embroidery hoop. I decided that 5 years was long enough to stitch daily icons! When I was still embroidering daily icons, I would update my embroidery journal every 3-5 days. 

One of the most common pain points I hear from people is that they are short on time. What are some tips for staying consistent with journaling and carving out time to work on it?

The great thing about an embroidery journal, is that you don’t need to make these big intricate icons, each of my icons tends to be no bigger than a penny – so they’re quite small! I also very rarely fill them in, so they don’t often take me longer than 10 minutes to stitch! 

I also find that keeping track of my days is the best way to stay on top of my embroidery journal when I’m not updating it on a daily basis. My memory is terrible, so if I tried to sit down and come up with an icon for something I did a week ago, I’d have a hard time figuring out what to embroider! So I use a note book to jot down what I did throughout the day and when I’m ready to update my Embroidery Journal, I sketch out potential icons for each day. It’s such a time saver!

You have some fantastic designs and products in your shop. What would you recommend for someone ready to get started?

If you’re looking to create your own Embroidery Journal, I have plenty of resources available to get you started. My in-depth 22-page Create Your Own Embroidery Journal is a great place to start! It covers essentially everything that you need to know: what supplies are needed, how to set up your embroidery hoop, creating icons, etc. The guide also includes over 80 icons and a basic template to get you ready to set up your embroidery hoop. 

However, if you’re someone that doesn’t have a closet packed with embroidery supplies, my Embroidery Journal Kits include everything you need to get started, like fabric, DMC thread, needles, and all of my various Embroidery Journal resources. 

Anything else you’d like to share?

On top of creating products for how to create an embroidery journal, I also have my own website where I interview people who have created their own embroidery journal and I write how to posts! 

Follow The Stir-Crazy Crafter

You can find Sophie on Instagram (@thestircrazycrafter), her website (stircrazycrafter.com), and on Etsy (sticrazycrafteruk.etsy.com).

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this, Sophie!