In today’s blog post, I’m going to be taking you behind the scenes in my process of falling back in love with one of my very oldest UFOs in my room - a project I’ve been blogging about with the hashtag #neverendingembroideryproject. This has been in my stash for about 10 years at least; it’s a handwork (don’t faint!) project that is based on the alphabet.

This was one of the first projects I bought on my first trip to Paducah, and the vendor mall where it was showcased was one of the first ones I encountered. I had learned to embroider as a young girl, and I thought it was a beautiful pattern. It is beautiful - it’s by Crabapple Hill Studios, and it’s well done. With a large number of patterns, I never really got into the rhythm or organizing the project…so it sat in a bin in the deep recesses of my closet.

I made attempts - but none of them really got off the ground,. I borrowed a lightbox from a guild mate at a retreat at one point - and spent the better part of the entire weekend painstakingly tracing all those patterns onto muslin. I have since found a better way to do this - stay with me to the end for that. I never really had a plan to get this project into my workflow.

This year, with Covid, and the desire for a more hands on project, I took this one out yet again to see about it. I was frankly at the point where I needed to decide whether I wanted to work on it, or to place it on quilters classifieds.

I took it out one afternoon in yet another half hearted attempt to work on it, and found myself again flipping through page after page trying to get a toehold on it. I finally snapped and literally broke it down so I could begin. I did, and you can too!

Here are 5 steps I took to fall back in love with it.