Whew! This project made my head spin before I even got started! Reason being is, math! I’m a bit math stupid some days.

Last year I kept seeing these really cute projects on hoops where they divide up the hoop into 12 sections, embroider the year in the middle, and every day they stitch a cute little icon to represent the day into one of those 12 sections. The 12 sections represent the 12 months of the year.

By the end of this year, I knew that I wanted to make my own embroidery journal, but I wanted something creative. Something all mine. Something to best represent the year of 2022 for me.

The standard hoops that everyone uses to do their embroidery journals just wasn’t cutting it for me. I don’t really care for the look of a hoop on the wall.

Instead of a hoop, I wanted my embroidery journal in a frame, or maybe a pillow or something, I wasn’t sure what I wanted until January 1st. I hemmed and hawed over the vast number of ideas, and I spent a lot of time looking at designs online. I finally settled on putting the journal into a frame when it was complete.

This morning I was cutting fabric and decided that the piece left over (12’x17″) looked about perfect for my 2022 embroidery journal. After researching standard frame sizes, I decided it would fit into a 11×14 frame. That was an easy visual, not requiring math at all. Whew!

The next part of the project wasn’t quite so easy, that required a whole lot of math. I had to figure out how to get a title and figure out how much room I needed for 365 squares. UGH! We finally decided that each square should be about 3/8″ inch. Hmm…. I think. I needed a visual to know for sure.

So, I started looking for a grid with 3/8″ on them, kind of like graph paper. That was not an easy find! I settled for a 1/4″ grid graph paper, but that was too small once I compared it with the fabric. Doubling it was too big too. That’s when I hit the jackpot in online searches… centimeters! 1 centimeter is very close to 3/8 inches. So, I printed off that grid from here.

From the printed grid I cut out 16 x 23 of them (6.29″ x 9.05″). That gave me 368 1-centimeter squares for a year’s worth of embroidery journaling. Perfect!

Now all I have left to figure out how much space a title will take, and of course the title itself…

Love what you do in 2022

That quote is what I intend to live by this year and felt it was perfect for the title of my embroidery piece.

So far, this project is looking GREAT in my head, I can’t wait to see what becomes of it when I actually start stitching. Wait until you see what I’m stitching with! (Hint: I’m using 1 knitting needle!) More to come…

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