Follow the stitch

27th July 2019

The challenge has been to not be held back by technical ability, to not get hung up by embroider skills. More compliated is not necessary more. Make it more about contruction, composition.

Small pieces, slowly

July 2019

Small pieces, slowly. Its proving hard to think big, or long term and this seems to be playing out in what I make. Short term commitment, portable. But also in my mind, small , tiny, is sometimes all I can manage. But perhaps this limitation makes it easy to be original and authentic, not trying to copy what others have done or what i think I should do, just following the stitch.

Creating small quiet places in my head. Sewing small pieces, small stitiches, soothes ragged nerves, but more than that, its a peacful place that’s just mine, a private place to go.

It started with a stitch

I wrote elsewhere about how I’d lost my creativity, and was struggling to do my job. I was crushed.

So now what am I left with?  My life is fairly grim.  I am trying to hold on to the moment, the moments, however fleeting, of joy. Build a temporary nest as beautifully as I can.   I am trying to preserve something for afterwards, for when I have to move forward. (Have to earn a living).  But it feels increasingly unlikely that this will be my work as I know it now.  Not because I can’t, but because in the prism of grief and loss and chaos, it has shattered and split, curdled.  I’ve lost the faith.

But then a thing happened. I was bored, I was sitting on a sofa next to my very very poorly husband all day everyday, watching crap tv and I was becoming ill with boredom. Sitting in chemotherapy wards being fidgetty and fed up. Then I picked up a crochet hook. It was a small thing. I’d never had much interest in crochet before, and lumped it aside knitting with I loath. But before I knew it I’d learnt a few stitches. My friend’s partner died. I wanted to give her something comforting, so I made her a blanket.

But I now realise I was always going to return to stitching. I mean, even before this horrible time. It was going to happen.

I started with an old pair of jeans. I pulled threads out of them and stitched them back in. Added new threads. And there you go, I have made art.

Now I can’t stop. I mean sometimes I don’t stitch for days. But then I have a frenzied few days of none stop sewing. Sometimes I just do what I feel like, sometimes what I feel like, just does. Sometimes I can’t help what I do, it just needs doing. You’ll see what I mean.