September 27, 2026 - A Grateful Heart Stitch Along

 I'm a sucker for a good Stitch Along, even though my record at sticking with it and finishing on time (or ever!) isn't very good, I jumped in on the stitch along hosted by Tara Sullivan and Nichol Spohr. The project is A Grateful Heart by The Scarlett House. I love everything produced by The Scarlett House! This project was one of the exclusives for the Homespun Needlework group on Facebook a year or so ago and I wanted to get it then but it was only available as a kit with linen, floss and the chart. I have enough floss and linen - didn't need that so I just waited until the chart was released to the public. 

The Stitch Along officially started Saturday, September 26. I got it all set up on Markup R-XP and was ready to start that day. Tara Sullivan created a "plan" and this is the assignment for the first week (and we can really stitch whatever we want): 

I would love to keep up with this project! 

Because I have no stitching frames that are empty but I have several that I loaded with linen for other projects that I never started, I grabbed one of those. I know it's a Picture This Plus linen and I'm pretty sure the color is Sand and I thought it was 36 count. When I started stitching, I got concerned that it might be 32 count and, if it is, it isn't going to be wide enough so I went ahead and stitched across the top row of the border to be sure I wasn't going to run out of linen and I'm not so it must be 36 count.

Here's my progress. I did a little more than the required amount for Week 1, which is ok.  The plan said to stitch two flowers on the left but I stitch right to left so I stitched the two flowers on the right. That's ok too - they don't have any serious rules.

When I was getting this one set up in Markup, I set my daily stitching goal to 450 stitches per day. I usually set it at 350 or 400 but with the Blackbird Academy going on, I need to get in a bit more stitching time each day.

You can see that I stitched 743 stitches on the 26th and 568 on the 27th. 

This project gets put away for a few days while I try my best to finish Come into my Garden before the end of September.