stitch journal textile artist stit by hand

September

The end of September already. October tomorrow. It really will be Christmas before we know it. No use getting ahead of ourselves here though.

I think the hag stones thing turned out OK in the end. Berries, apples, or pears would have worked equally well.

I think of the little unstitched space in each shape as a tiny bit of welcome silence. The world always seems very noisy to me.

Our house has recently gone up for sale, and we are looking for quiet. Not remote, as I don’t drive and I need a good post office within walking distance. But some quiet would be nice.

I really like the blue spiral – textured silk yarn couched with silk thread

It still surprises me how much thinking time and reflection time there is in daily stitching. There is nothing to do except focus on needle and thread while you let the thoughts come and go.

The entire page has turned out to be a visual record of our decision to look for a new home. Not in any literal or figurative sense, but I can see weighings-up, imaginings, letting gos, and looking aheads. There is a kind of loss as well as a potential gain, because every beginning is preceded by an end, and every end is followed by a beginning. It’s just one continuous line really.

Next month (sing along if you know it) – the falling leaves… drift by the window… those autumn leaves… of red and gold…

Some letting go.

Making connections

I’ve been having a go at designing next year’s stitch journal template. A bit early to be thinking about that, I know, but the way this year is speeding by I thought it best to make a start.

It will be slightly different from the last two years, in that next year’s daily stitching will be a big square (ish) rather than a long strip. I’ve designed it across twelve pieces of A4 paper that all have to fit together to make the whole thing, so it’s a reasonably complex task that is still very much in progress. I’m imagining that it’s a map of the coming year, in the form of an aerial view of fields.

I *think* it will work. I have yet to print it, to try cutting and re-assembling the separate pieces for myself, but once I’ve done that I’ll aim to make the template available before the end of the year.

As I was looking at all twelve pages glued together to make the 36″ square, I found myself imagining how it would look in fabric as patchwork.

These things often start out as idle wonderings but sometimes they gather momentum while you’re looking the other way and before you know it, you’re cutting out tiny bits of green fabric and the thing has begun.

The thing about English paper piecing (piecing fabric over paper) is that you can do it with any tessellating shapes, however irregular they might be, and I had a whole tableful of tessellating shapes waiting to be something.

I took a photo of the master template and added colour on Procreate, a digital drawing app. I envisage this as fields through the seasons, so the outer edges will be greys and browns, while the central area will be more vibrant greens and golds. That’s the plan so far, but the best thing to know about plans is that they can change completely at any moment.

I used to do a lot of patchwork, and it’s still one of my favourite things. I love the way it holds the connections between fabrics, time, and memory. I can identify every fabric here as the old friend each of them is – some from clothes that wore out; some from an old bed sheet that became a dust sheet and was later torn up and dyed; some vintage fabrics, found and dyed.

birdie is slightly startled by the sudden change of plan

progress so far, about one-sixth of the whole

What started out as a map for next year has gone sideways into a whole new adventure.

It will still be a stitch journal template as well, but what fun to make two different things out of the same design.

August daily stitching

Genuinely don’t know where August went. I say this every month, I know. Every day seems to pass in a blur.

I had some reservations about this template, but it’s turned out to be my favourite so far this year.

There were lots of options for how to stitch the radiating segments but generally my preference is for keeping things simple. Running stitch is restful to work, and can look really effective.

I was thinking about first harvest for this month – that’s grain – and running stitches/small isolated stitches look like seeds, from which all things grow. And seeds are the culmination of a plant’s annual work too, so an end and a new beginning all at once.

The back, as always, is a kind of map. Or a mirror, perhaps. Beginnings and loose ends, which is what life is made of.

Next month – well, we’ll see how it turns out. The template was designed to indicate second harvest – that’s fruit – berries, apples, etc – but somehow I’ve made it look like hagstones.

I like hagstones. To me they are magical. Let’s see how they turn out. There’s no real plan, and no right or wrong. Just days, waiting to be filled.

July days

Another month gone, just like that.

I’m enjoying these templates for 2023, which you can find here. I didn’t think there was enough green on the page so I added some impromptu leaves here and there.

All threads are equal, but some threads are more equal than others, (with apologies to George Orwell). Thicker threads can look a little out of scale at this size, and I much prefer the motifs that have been stitched with finer threads – probably perle 12 and finer.

The very simple fly stitch flower below reminds me a bit of a snowflake. Summer is always followed by autumn and winter, and winter is always followed by spring and summer. The wheel is constantly turning, and time doesn’t stand still.

I think of these pages as self portraits. The other side is the face we don’t generally show to the world.

I’ve felt a hint of autumn in the air some mornings already, in this part of the UK, and the light is starting to change. The traditional pagan calendar sees autumn beginning tomorrow, with first harvest. My August template is meant to be a kind of geometric cornucopia, loosely based on the shape of traditional corn dollies that are plaited and woven at the end of the season and kept to ensure a fruitful harvest the following year. I’m looking forward to a more autumnal colour palette.

We found three leftover ears of wheat by the side of a farmer’s field while out walking a few years ago. The harvest had already been gathered, and these were lying on the ground. I plaited the stalks (very inexpertly, as you can see) and we hang it on the hearth at this time of year as a wish for fruitful endeavours.

And on that note, wishing you a happy and fruitful Monday 🙂

Journal to Book

A few people have asked how I’ve made this year’s long strip of daily stitching into a book. If you do an internet search for concertina-style books you will see that it’s quite an easy technique to adapt for cloth.

This is the process I’m using for turning my daily stitching, on a long strip of vintage bed sheet, into a cloth book.

You will need to make some sort of cover for your book, which will consist of a front cover, a spine, and a back cover – this can be all one piece, as mine is, or you can piece fabrics together so that the spine is a different colour. The cover needs to be a tiny bit bigger (a few millimetres, or a quarter of an inch or so) than your stitch journal pages.

2023 daily stitching, linen cover with simple running stitch

To determine the width of the spine, you will need to fold your stitch journal cloth strip, concertina-style, back and forth, into as many pages as you want to have, and then measure the height of your folded stack. The diagram below shows roughly how the construction will work.

(very rough) diagram showing cover construction and page folds

The height of the folded stack will tell you how wide the spine of the cover needs to be. The spine of my cover is about an inch wide. The first and last pages will be stitched to the inside front and back covers, the valley folds will be stitched to the spine of the cover, and the mountain folds will form the outer edges of the double-sided pages.

Once your cover is constructed, you can start to stitch your completed pages down. It’s possible to stitch all the pages down right away, but I prefer to wait until they’re finished because once they’re attached to the spine, you won’t be able to get at them so easily.

You can mark the inside of the spine, dividing it into six (this is the number of times you will attach a valley fold) so that you have guidelines for where to stitch the page down. You will basically be sewing every other page to the cover. A running stitch is fine, but you could also backstitch.

marking page divisions on the inside spine of the cover

I use perle 12 cotton thread for stitching the pages to the spine, but any good strong sewing thread would be fine. Here’s the process in action:

stitching a page to the cover

Hope this helps.

June days

And that was June.

Long lines this month on the daily stitch journal:

I’ve found this format to be quite a challenge at times. Filling a line is not at all the same as filling a box-shaped space. The path is already mapped out and you have to walk its length. A box or square – your needle and thread can meander around in it, but a long straight line knows where it’s going and you have to follow it.

And that’s a fair example of art reflecting life, because I also find the long summer days themselves to be a bit challenging. I like sunshine, in moderation, but not heat. I like night time to be cool and dark. Even with blackout curtains it just doesn’t get dark enough at this time of year and sunrise is some ridiculous time in the middle of the night. It’s also been unusually hot here the last few weeks, and every room in the house has been several degrees warmer than is comfortable. Sometimes I go to the local Sainsbury’s just to cool down – their air conditioning makes the whole shop feel like a giant fridge.

Yesterday I found a vintage Coats mercerised cotton crochet thread in variegated yellows in a local charity shop for 50p. I don’t have much yellow thread – it’s not a colour I tend to use very often – but it looked so delicious that it had to come home with me. It made a lovely detached chain stitch.

And everyone likes to see the other side, of course. Once this is made up into a book, the other side will no longer be visible. Next year I think I will return to the two-sided format where the back remains accessible. I like to see it.

Next month will be summer flowers. I think this could be fun.

July ahead – flowers marked with Frixion pen

I’ve reached a bit of a landmark: the end of June marks my first six months of working for myself. It’s been hard work and long hours and immensely rewarding, but I am quite tired. Next week I’m taking a social media break for a week or two, just to potter behind the scenes and recharge a little. I will still process any orders and respond to emails, but Instagram and Facebook can carry on without me for a little while. I may still post here, if I have anything to say. Does a blog count as social media? I guess it probably does, but then the pace here is slow enough to be ok.

May

Another month seems to have disappeared in a whirl, leaving just a few stitches behind to prove it was there.

I went back to the grid formation for this month, which I like because it always feels like a more accurate representation of days: a few patches of time with no spaces between. I like the other layouts too, for different reasons.

Lots of flowering and new growth in the garden. Some days brought less happy news, but things seem to be looking a little brighter now.

Earlier in the month we found time to go and see the bluebells and wild garlic in the woods.

The front shows where you go, and the back shows how you got there. Two sides of the same story.

The stitch journal is becoming a book. I’ve stitched the first few completed pages into the spine of the cover. The music is Menuet from Bach’s Cello Suite no 1 in G major, expertly played by cellist Steven Isserlis.

it’s a book

Still a lot of the year still to go, and a few feet of linen waiting to unfold. June will be vertical stripes. Long days.

Still on paper

One of those strange conundrums – the older I get, the slower I become, but the faster time passes. That makes a net loss multiplied by two, according to my flawed logic.

There is no rush, of course, and everything takes as long as it takes. There just never seems to be enough time to do all the things I want to do.

So I am still on paper and got distracted by noticing I was running low on collage paper, so had to stop and paint some more. Actually this is one of my favourite activities. I use inks, paints and mark-making tools of various kinds to liven up old book pages, envelopes, junk mail etc. Loosening up and splashing some colour around makes for a very happy (slightly messy) afternoon.

The sketchbooks I made for the shop last week disappeared in about an hour, so I’ve made a few more – these are the last of them, for now at least.

blank sketchbooks, cotton rag paper with vintage silk ribbons and collage papers

And finally, in what’s turning out to be more of a news roundup than any kind of meaningful post, I’m really happy to have had my work featured by My Modern Met. You can read the article here.

Patchwork with thread

One of the best things about a daily stitch practice is that you can use up all the odd ends of thread and yarn that seem to accumulate from other projects. If you keep it simple, you only need a yard or two of thread per day so it’s a good opportunity to use up the last bit of thread in a particular colour.

couched circle with vintage cotton thread

I only had a yard or so left of this purple and white marl yarn, and it turned out to be almost exactly the right amount to fill the circle and outline the box. I’ve stitched it down with a vintage cotton thread – maybe Sylko or Coats, it’s lost its label.

couched circle on vintage linen/cotton bed sheet

It’s exactly like patchwork, but with thread instead of fabric.

April

30 circles, 30 days. A few minutes of quiet stitching every day, each one a little oasis of calm.

I like the negative space. It’s like the untold part of the story, the gaps between thoughts and activities.

I’ve also been working a bit more on the cover, since this will eventually fold up into a book.

It’s very simple but it’s enough, I think.

April, detail – new growth and spring rain

Next month, back to the grid – squares/blocks with occasional circles. Maybe the best of both worlds.

Incidentally, you can now purchase and download my 2023 templates here – 12 different templates, approximately A4 size (or 8.5″ x 11″ letter size, if you’re not in Europe): there are some grids, some blocks, some lines, some shapes. I’m looking forward to using them myself.

Tag: stitch journal

September

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Making connections

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August daily stitching

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July days

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Journal to Book

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June days

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May

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Still on paper

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Patchwork with thread

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April

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