Tag: textile art

I say it every month but even with the extra hour from putting our clocks back last weekend, time is still flying by so quickly. It’s unstoppable, of course. Time is all we have, and it keeps on rolling. And time is what I’m trying to illustrate here. A map of time, moments in days, days in a life.

Today is Samhain, in the traditional pagan calendar the beginning of winter. The days are already short, and the nights are already dark. Some say the veil between the worlds is thinner today.

I know a lot of people don’t enjoy the dark days and nights, but I’ll take hats and scarves and boots over shorts and sandals any day. There’s a lot to look forward to: cosy evenings with good books, lamps and candles, warm quilts to wrap around chilly knees, hot soup, and (even better) hot chocolate. I sometimes wonder if the season of our birth somehow becomes our favourite time of year. Maybe having a winter birthday means I enjoy this time of year more than summer.

So far there have been falling leaves and blue-grey skies, and more to come.

As usual, keeping it simple. Little stitches marking the passage of time.

I don’t often use backstitch – I find it a bit finicky – but I do like this one, worked in a space-dyed silk perle 8 thread:

I like the other side even better. The other side of back-stitch is split stitch:

There isn’t much left of this year:

I’m starting to think about next year’s template, of course. I only have enough of this lovely vintage linen for one more year. My remaining piece measures about 5 feet by about 3 feet, and I’m thinking about whether to make another large cloth, this time in a 3 x 4 formation, or whether to cut and join strips of it to make a long cloth.

What I’ve enjoyed most about this year’s template is the variety. I really like the way every day is a different size and shape, as they often are in reality, and the way the days fit so seamlessly together, also as they do in real life.

I’m finding myself repeatedly drawing a kind of wavy grid in my sketchbook work lately, and I’m thinking I might base my new template on something like that. The grid pattern makes me think of an enlarged photo showing the weave of a piece of gauzy fabric, like cheesecloth or scrim.

It’s very much a work in progress.

At some point I will be ready for 2025, but not just yet.

Eight months down, four to go. Each month seems to vanish faster than the last.

As always, no plan, no design. Just pick up a threaded needle and start stitching.

In the traditional Celtic calendar, autumn begins with Lammas on the 1st of August. The weather presenters will have us believe it’s still summer because it’s warm and the sun is shining. But weather is not season, and here in the UK you can see the light changing throughout August, and by the end of the month you can smell and feel autumn as well as see it.

I really like the softer muted colours that come with autumn and winter, and I’ll enjoy choosing some of them for the rest of the year.

Thread winding is still very much ongoing in preparation for the shop update some time next month, and the advantage for me is that I get to replenish some of my own threads too.

I also like to road-test them to check the quality. I’ve got a couple of new suppliers this time so I need to satisfy myself that the threads are up to it. Very happy so far.

August wouldn’t be complete without a view of the other side. The side we don’t show the world, the side we don’t choose to look at, the side that makes us what we are. Whether we like it or not, it’s there and it’s got nothing to hide. As always, I like some of these marks better from the back. One of these days I will turn the stitch journal over, stitch on the back and let the ‘wrong’ side be on show.

We’re having our bathroom renovated next week. I’m kind of dreading the upheaval, the noise, the mess, the dust, etc but very much looking forward to a long soak in a hot bath when it’s all over. I’m not sure how much the disruption will slow down the thread winding, but I’ll do my best to keep up.

How quickly the days pass.

There were (and still are) some hot days. Many weather forecasters in this country are jubilant every time the sun is shining as they announce the arrival of more ‘lovely’ weather. They’ve taken to describing 28 degrees (which for this part of the UK is very unusual) as ‘warm’. Only a few years ago the same temperature would have been described as ‘very hot’. There hasn’t been any rain for several weeks, which is also unusual for this part of the UK. I try to stay away from getting too overtly political here but global warming worries me, and I find this normalising of rising temperatures by the mainstream media to be particularly alarming.

I find myself uncharacteristically short of patience in hot weather; I’m not good at tolerating extreme heat and very bright sunlight. Thank goodness for autumn waiting around the corner and the return of darker nights. I caught the faintest whiff of autumn early yesterday morning, and soon the light will begin to change.

In the meantime of course I keep going, because this is life and there is joy in every day. The joy might not always be immediately visible on the surface, but it’s there nevertheless just waiting to be found.

There was a funeral this month for our friend. A day edged with sadness but filled with happy memories of an amazing woman and a talented artist. We are so lucky to have known her during her long life.

Sometimes if there’s a bit of border yarn left over I curl it around in the corner as you can see below. A kind Instagram reader commented that it looks like a Koru (I had to look it up) which symbolises harmony and eternal movement, and how lovely is that.

The other side isn’t always that neat, but then I think neat can be over-rated.

I’m immersed in the creation of video lessons at present for my new paper-pieced patchwork course. It’s slow going but I think it will be ok in the end, as most things are.