thinking through making 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.

back to work…

…after the second bank holiday weekend in a row. It’s probably done me some good to take a couple of days out, though time off isn’t quite the same when you get to do what you love for a living.

The more industrious corner of my work table doesn’t know about time so it’s still exactly as it was when I downed tools on Friday. I see now it needs dusting. Thread and fabric shed their fibres all the time.

You can also see a couple of beautifully smooth pebbles from a recent trip to the seaside. I was lucky enough to find a hag stone, a pebble with holes in it, which you can just see hanging above. It’s sometimes said that they find you. I love to marvel at how old these things are, how many millions of years they’ve been around. How much time they hold.

Also on the table, appropriately enough, is Marking Time II (and thank you, Dawn, for naming it). This is another long cloth pieced from hand-dyed vintage fabrics and stitched with motifs from ancient rocks and prehistoric marks on the land.

ancient hill forts, couched cotton yarn with simple stitch on hand-dyed linen

The beautiful lightweight cotton fabric in the section below is eco-printed by Jane Hunter and makes the perfect ground for some couched cup and ring marks. I will add more stitch, of course.

Easing myself back into the working week, and hoping your week ahead is a good one.

Still making time

I gave myself a break over Easter. I’ve come back to the cloth that (as yet) has no name: the first in a small series about cup and ring marks, ancient circles and spirals, lines and basic marks.

These lines and circles seem to communicate without words. Maybe they come from a time before language; certainly before literacy. There is a kind of magic about them, a deep and unfathomable wisdom in their shapes.

Couched spirals with running stitch and straight stitch

I’m enjoying the earthy colour palette here, and the repeating motifs.

I’ve been invited to give a talk to a local stitching group and I’m just gathering together some inspiration. I’ll take this unfinished cloth too, mostly to see if anyone can help name it.

Sketchbooks, daily stitching, and mixed media all up for discussion

Running stitch

I’m continuing with the linen cover for this year’s stitch journal.

I hardly ever do straight lines intentionally. I used masking tape to keep me on the straight and narrow. Initially I started with lines of running stitch to give some sort of structure on which to build something more complex. I was thinking maybe couching, or columns of embroidery, or whipped running stitch. If ever I don’t know what to do with a blank canvas, I generally find that making a start with running stitch takes it where it needs to go. And sometimes it turns out that running stitch is all it needs. I find I’m really liking the simplicity of it.

Initially it was going to be just blue, but I’ve started adding some greens and some space-dyed threads that give a flash of colour here and there. I’m using fine-ish threads – nothing thicker than perle 12 – and mostly my own hand-dyed cotton and silk. I like the unpredictable subtle colour changes that you get with hand-dyed thread.

The title box is outlined with couched silk boucle. I’m not sure what the title will be yet. The heavyweight linen came from a vintage French shirt, and is difficult to stitch on – I have had to resort to a thimble, which I hardly ever use – but beautiful quality. I can’t imagine it having been a very comfortable shirt, but I think it will be a perfect journal cover.

Making time

This cloth is the first in a series exploring the timeless marks found on ancient rocks. Circles, rings, spirals, and lines – all quite abstract but eternally symbolic and full of meaning.

I’ve used hand-dyed silk bourette yarn for couching the rings. It has a lovely soft texture and, unusually for silk, doesn’t have so much of a sheen. It looks and feels more like very soft wool.

The rings on the grey silk band are made with very fine silk tulle, which weighs almost nothing but has a strong will of its own and can be quite tricksy. You have to work very slowly with it and pin it down as you go, otherwise it tends to wriggle away and wander off. This is not a great photo but was only intended to show myself where the rings needed adjusting a little before committing to stitching them down.

A few stitches later, they’re sitting quite nicely.

Silk tulle rings on hand-dyed silk, in progress.

It’s taking its time, and I’m sitting with each mark to see where it needs more. These plain running stitch circles may or may not be finished. The cloth in this section is textured silk, similar to silk noil but slightly heavier and thicker.

Taking time to make time. All the time is already there. It’s just a matter of finding it.

Haunting

We all have some – the precious, fragile treasures that are taken out from time to time, admired, and then carefully laid back in their box. Relics from another age, fragments of a life long ago laid aside. Somehow they stay with us, surviving war, flood, and other catastrophes.

They’re far too lovely to live in a box, but that’s probably the best place for them, long term. I’ve chosen a few very fragile, ragged fragments and I’m in the process of stitching them to a long, layered cloth made from pieces of vintage linen and cotton.

I’ve had these beautiful lace fabrics for many years, and somehow it just seems time for them to be out in the world again. The vintage embroidered monogram below had been glued to a paper label by its manufacturer, and is gradually coming away. The paper is very fragile, but I want to stitch the whole piece to this cloth so I’ve stabilised the paper by brushing acrylic medium on the back and then sticking it to some antique cotton bobbinet. I don’t know if this will hold, but it feels a lot more robust than it did.

The very fine cotton cutwork trim on the section below has been hand-embroidered, and was once part of a petticoat. The monogrammed silk fragment is from a chemise, also hand-stitched.

Antique cutwork and fragment from silk chemise

The tiny pintucks in this silk are from a christening dress. Looking at the quality of the machine stitches, I think it’s probably been sewn on a manual treadle machine.

And the nineteenth-century fragment below, impossibly fine, is from a tippet, a cross between a shawl and a scarf, worn around the neck or shoulders. The fabric is thinner than tissue paper.

Fragment of embroidered tippet, about 1.5” square

The embroidery stitches are tiny, and I think it’s been done by hand. If you look at the back, it lacks the rigid regularity that machine work has.

Inevitably, as I’m stitching, I’m thinking about the women who made and wore these fabrics. It seems strange to think of them as dead, when what they left behind is so alive and has such presence. There is a kind of sadness, a touch of the Miss Havisham, perhaps, about this piece; but there’s also an immense strength and a palpable sense of survival. How something can be so insubstantial, so easily torn, so translucent, and yet still so strong and beautiful, amazes me every time.

Threads

While I’m waiting for more thread to arrive in the post, I’m compiling for myself a thread catalogue. This is really just somewhere for me to organise and categorise the various types of thread that I will be stocking and dyeing.

Notebook, back cover – acrylic ink, Posca paint pens, various mark-making tools and textures

Initially this was just going to be a notebook and cover, but, well, these things often get a bit out of hand, and now it’s slightly more complicated than that.

Book wrap – couched threads and yarns on hand-dyed silk noil

The colour palette came about by accident, after I dyed these thick cotton boucle yarns, which will wrap around the whole thing to tie it shut:

I really like the way this very thick-and-thin dimensional cotton slub yarn can be flattened when it’s couched with long stitches:

Anyway, back to over-complicating things, and now it’s a notebook in a wraparound cover, with a pocket for index cards carrying samples and information about the various threads. The pocket came from a silk shirt that I dyed.

Wraparound book cover with notebook and pocket for index cards

I find it very useful to round up information for comparative purposes, so that I can see at a glance how (for instance) silk and cotton threads compare in terms of weight or thickness. Thread weights are sometimes given as an nm figure, which I don’t find particularly helpful. Broadly, this system translates as the number of meters per 1g of thread (the first number) and the number of plies or strands in the thread (the second number). So the silk thread pictured below has a nm of 8/2, which tells you it’s a 2-ply thread, and you get about 8 metres of it per gram. For comparison, standard sewing thread (the kind you would use in a machine) is usually something like 60 or 70/2, which is a lot finer. As a visual thinker, I find it much easier to picture thread weights in terms of wraps per inch – I’m not certain but I think this is a system that is more commonly seen in the knitting world, to help with substituting yarn weights in patterns. I find it much easier to understand that the silk thread below has about 23 wraps per inch (the number of times you can wrap it around a one-inch strip without leaving any gaps).

Silk thread wrapped around card, 23 wraps per inch

Finer silk threads, which have an nm of 16/2 and 30/2, have wraps per inch of about 29 and 44 respectively. I find this easier to visualise.

I’m using commercial cotton perle threads as controls, just to see how the weights of my various hand-dyed threads will compare. And even that isn’t as ‘standard’ as you might expect. I’ve used DMC perle 3 to 8 to count wraps per inch, but I didn’t have enough DMC perle 12 so had to use a Valdani perle 12 instead. And here’s the surprise – there isn’t a huge amount of difference between DMC perle 8 (43 wpi) and Valdani perle 12 (44 wpi). I can see by enlarging the photos that the 12 card maybe isn’t wrapped as closely as the 8, but that would only account for another 3 or 4-ish.

This is turning into quite a rabbit hole, isn’t it? I expect somebody somewhere will tell me I’ve got too much time on my hands, but I find this kind of thing really fascinating. Ultimately I suspect this will end up being a self-referencing closed system that only I will understand, and I think that’s probably ok. As soon as thread reinforcements arrive, I’ll be able to start winding skeins for dyeing again – but in the meantime I’m enjoying some quite reasonable down time.

Spots of Time

I’m aiming to use a different template for each month this year, just to see how that works. February is pebble-shaped ‘spots of time’, a phrase from Wordsworth’s long poem The Prelude.

From Wordsworth’s text:

‘There are in our existence spots of time,
 That with distinct pre-eminence retain
 A renovating virtue, whence…
                           …our minds
 Are nourished and invisibly repaired’

William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1850), Book 12, ll.208-15

Spots of time in this context are visual representations of time and memory, a spotlight on a few moments of life, that can hold peace and bring renovation. Time, experience and memory are really all we have. That’s our life. With the passing of time, experience becomes memory.

A few stitches on a cloth is a few footsteps on a path. We may not know how long the path is or where it goes, but along the way there will be these little dots of peace and joy.

I really like the fact that this is one single layer, and that the back is accessible. I’m not so sure how that will work when the whole thing is folded concertina-style into a book, when the back will then be hidden under the folds.

The cloth is starting to soften very nicely. It’s just like getting to know a new friend.

Tag: thinking through making

September

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Making connections

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August daily stitching

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back to work…

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Still making time

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Running stitch

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Making time

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Haunting

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Threads

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Spots of Time

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