A few years ago, Sophie O’Neill, who works as The stir-crazy Crafter– had not yet learned to embroider. She had no supplies, but one idea in particular sparked a creative flame: an embroidery journal. The first one she saw was made by a fiber artist Sam Gillespieand O’Neill immediately purchased some basic supplies and began threading a needle and thread through the fabric. She was addicted.
Each day, O’Neill sews a single symbol or word that she chooses to represent her day. “This could be a cup of coffee because I went out to dinner with friends, a firecracker because I was craving the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, or even a tissue because I wasn’t feeling well,” she tells Colossal. “At the end of the year, I put together a collection of 365 icons that represent my entire year.” And at the end of 2024, she completed her fifth diary, totaling more than 1,800 individual images.
A trick to overall composition is knowing where to start. O’Neill lays out her blank, circular canvas like a clock or a twelve-piece cake, with each hour or slice representing a month. “This is one of those things that seems complicated at first, but as the year goes on it gets easier,” she says.
Even on days when she doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, O’Neill somehow describes the 24-hour period. The journal “makes me think outside the box about what I do every day,” she says. “I may have just read a book and done some cleaning during the day, but I can break those actions down into smaller things to figure out what I can embroider for my daily icon.”
The playful enamel pins often seen in photos of her work-in-progress are known as “needle minders,” where the prong is replaced with a set of magnets that can hold the needle when she’s not actively embroidering. It’s a tool O’Neill can’t live without.
In the same vein as the daily stitches, O’Neill also keeps track of the books she flips through throughout the year, embroidering bookmarks in the form of shelves filled with color to represent the titles she has read.
You can purchase patterns and supplies in the artist’s Etsy shopand follow up on updates Instagram. And if you are also an embroidery journalist, you can become a member of O’Neill’s Facebook group to share your progress and see how others are designing theirs. (via Kottke)
