New door stop
Our cottage now has a robotic vacuum, which means we no longer spend half our visit sucking up dead bugs. Technology wins again. Of course, the little machine has a habit of wedging itself into the most improbable places. The bathroom has been a repeat trouble spot, so we started propping the door shut with a brick whenever we leave. That worked—until the brick and the robot teamed up to scuff the door. My husband’s solution was to wrap the brick in duct tape, giving our makeshift doorstop a slightly more “gentle” finish.
Having finally identified the problem, I decided we needed a doorstop with a bit more padding. So I brought home a fresh brick to turn into our upgraded, cottage‑friendly version. I dug out my punch‑needle supplies and got to work. Step one was making a template: using the brick itself, I traced the top and each of the sides so I’d have the exact dimensions to cover it properly.
Next, I had to settle on a design. I ended up sketching a grid and decided to fill it with random blocks of colour. With that plan in mind, I dug through my yarn stash and pulled out a skein of Lion Brand Respun. Since the yarn shifts colours, I wound it into separate balls, snipping each shade apart as I went. That left me with tidy little piles of red, orange, yellow, green, and blue to work with. I also grabbed a ball of black yarn that was roughly the same thickness to round out the palette.
With my design sorted out, it was time to test my new frame—a rotating model from The Needleworks Shop that I snagged back in November from a Facebook destash group. Once the Monk’s cloth was mounted, I could finally start punching. Since we’re looking at the back side of the work, the texture isn’t visible yet, but the layout is. I filled in the black squares first, then began adding the colours at random. My goal was simply to spread everything out evenly and avoid having two neighbouring squares in the same shade.
With the punching finished, I took the piece off the frame and flipped it over. The front was a wild tangle of yarn tails—messy enough that it was hard to see the actual design underneath. It was time to start trimming everything down and reveal how the pattern really turned out.
With the punching done, I set the piece aside for the night. I was pretty pleased with myself—drawing the design, winding the yarn, and punching the whole thing in a single evening felt like a solid win. The next day, I pulled out my brick and tested how the cover fit. That first attempt at folding it over the brick was surprisingly encouraging; everything seemed to line up just the way I’d hoped.
I dug out my sewing supplies and started stitching up the corners. Sewing around a brick turned out to be a bit awkward, but with some patience I managed to get all four corners secured. I used black thread so it would blend in with the punched design and disappear into the background.
With the corners finished, it was time to tackle the bottom. As you can see from the photos, sewing the corners left quite a bit of excess Monk’s cloth to deal with. I experimented with a few different folding options until I found one that looked tidy. Then I trimmed away the extra fabric so I wouldn’t end up with a big lump on the underside of the doorstop. Using white thread, I stitched the flaps down. The sewing isn’t especially neat, but it’s solid and functional—and that’s good enough for me.
A few days later, I brought the finished doorstop up to the cottage and swapped it in for the old duct‑taped brick. Here it is in its new home, doing its job and looking far more cheerful than its predecessor. I’m genuinely pleased with how it turned out, and I’ll probably make another one at some point. Small projects like this are such a fun way to experiment and build confidence in my skills.
