Sophia Drescher has recently started embroidering, it was January of 2019. This passion really captured the girl: "I love embroidery because fabrics, threads and yarn inspire you to stay in touch with nature, be interested in the living world and even push you to learn more and more about it."

Unfortunately, it was not possible to embroider regularly: last year, Sofia finished her studies at the University and was preparing to become a master in the field of biodiversity and ecology. But she didn't want to throw her embroidery away, either.

And so, to push herself to creativity and give it a decent time, Sofia came up with the challenge - "100 days of nature embroidery". The idea is simple: every day the craftswoman embroidered a small piece of work dedicated to the world around her.

The challenge officially started on September 26, 2019. Every day, Sofia shared her progress with her followers, and this is how the finished work of the first day looked like:

In order to keep up with the schedule and really present the finished project every day, Sofia worked in a rather miniature format: all the embroidered stories fit into a frame of 8.5 and 10.5 centimeters.

But even taking into account the small size of each embroidery she had to work hard. The girl admits that she spent from 4 hours to a whole day with a thread and needle in her hands, carrying out the idea in three stages: first drawing on the fabric, then embroidering, and at the end — photographing the result.

Today, Sofia's experiment has already come to an end. And she did it! The girl really spent a hundred days in a row and created a whole collection of various natural subjects. Below are my personal favorites :)

Here, for example, are instances dedicated to the Kingdom of mushrooms:

And this hoop can be used both as a decor and a pin cushion:

The plant world fascinates with the freshness and beauty of color transitions:

Sofia has a special love for ferns:

A couple of times the girl embroidered plant wreaths. Such as:

And I liked the snowdrops in her performance most of all. Sofia was inspired to embroider these spring flowers by vintage botanical illustrations:

Of course, animals in embroidery were also present, and the most diverse ones:

There were also beautiful butterflies (or night moths):

And my absolute favorite is a snail in the rain :)

The mini-series with sleeping animals deserves special mention. Sheer emotion!

But most of all Sofia liked to embroider birds. The girl simply adores them! Even one of the main personal goals for 2020 for the craftswoman is to learn to recognize birds by their voices.

The embroidery marathon ended on January 6, and here are the conclusions Sofia made on its results:

• it is important to allow yourself to be spontaneous and embroider what you want today, rather than following some rigid plan;
• sometimes you have to forget what "perfectionism" is — otherwise you will never finish what you started, and you can add more and more details endlessly;
• sit down for embroidery the earlier the better;
• find your style in photographing and stick to it. And don't forget about good lighting;
• embody in your work what you really, really love — then you will be motivated and inspired to share the results with others;
• you can start and finish a lot in just one day!

From the very beginning, Sofia planned to sell her works and eventually send 10% of the profits to a nature protection fund. It so happened that life itself prompted the craftswoman where to send help: the recipient was the largest organization in Australia for the rescue of wildlife WIRES Wildlife Rescue.

Have you ever participated in creative marathons? What were your impressions? And did you like Sofia's embroidery? I will be happy to hear your opinion in the comments!