When I started this challenge, I thought the new thing I was learning was smocking. And technically, it was. But looking at the finished dress, I think I learned much more about the process of learning a new technique.

There is a temptation when you're trying something for the first time to follow all of the rules—to make the technique look the way it is "supposed" to look so that you've somehow proven you learned it correctly.

But that's not really how I want to make things.

For this month’s Aurifil Artisan challenge, the prompt was Slow Stitch Summer which meant putting the machine aside for a bit and spending some time with hand stitching.

I knew almost immediately that I wanted to combine the challenge with something else I had been dying to try: cyanotype printing on fabric.

Sometimes the smallest scraps—the ones most people would sweep into the trash—are simply waiting for someone to imagine a different future for them.