Halfway through the year already. How did that happen?
The aerial map is filling up so quickly.
2024 so far
June days:
June
I really like the way the days are such different shapes on this year’s template. It feels like life. Some days feel longer or wider than others; some days have sharp corners; some days have crossing paths. Some days feel like running just to stand still.
June, detail
Some days were too hot.
June, detail
Every day, as always, just choosing thread and colour, letting stitches fall wherever they land. Marking the passage of time.
June detail
Today we can see the back of June.
the back of June
And tomorrow, July. Between times, the cloth lives in this cover. Part embroidery, part patchwork. If you missed it, you can read about the making of the cover here
Everything patchwork here this week. A little sketchbook cover, with one of Jude’s moons finding a home:
sketchbook cover, 6″ x 5″
You can see that I’ve couched a thicker thread (silk perle 3) over some of the seams, just to define some of the lines.
couching in the ditch
The little book of patchwork, I’m calling it. Somewhere to collect and join fragments of thought.
patchwork objectssketchbook page
Inspiration comes from unlikely places. This outdoor paving kit from The Range translates perfectly:
pavement patchwork
I’ve dug out these fragments of late Victorian patchwork, just to look and to touch the antique papers.
Victorian patchwork, impossibly tiny stitches
This week I’m putting a patchwork sampler together, just to see how that might work. At some point there will be a (hexagon-free) paper-piecing patchwork course. Nothing wrong with hexagons, but paper piecing is much more than granny’s flower garden.
Progress on piecing this patchwork is slow, but that’s fine and exactly as it should be.
hand piecing
Sewing by hand creates plenty of thinking time. I’m currently thinking about where I live online. I have the blog here on WordPress, an online shop with Big Cartel, and a Teachable school for online courses, plus Instagram and Facebook. Big Cartel and Teachable are quite heavy on annual maintenance fees, and ideally I’d like as much as possible in one place to simplify things more. I’m basically a Luddite, so I will need to investigate the technical options for reducing or combining everything I have into fewer separate spaces.
At the same time I’m weighing up whether to create more online courses with Teachable, or whether to create some sort of exclusive subscriber-only content for sharing more process videos and techniques etc. That would probably mean setting up something like Patreon, which would result in even more online homes, unless there’s a way to do something like that here on WordPress.
I’m also considering whether to continue offering overseas shipping for physical goods like fabrics and threads. International shipping is very expensive, it can take several weeks to reach its destination, and there can be additional customs charges when it does arrive. I have no control at all over any of that, but fielding the questions and occasional complaint does take time and energy. Customs charges seem to be particularly prevalent in European countries since the UK, in its ill-informed judgement, decided to leave the EU.
The box of patchwork pieces is basically a box of separate thoughts, plans and ideas. I just need to join them together.
There’s a lot going on here. Lots of beginnings but, as always, nowhere near enough time for the middles and the ends.
I’ve rounded up (squared up) some neutral and tea-dyed scraps for patchwork pieces, which will be a quilt eventually. (Cream pieces on a cream rug – someone tell the photographer the artist could have made this easier. Oh hang on, that’s me. And me.)
patchwork jigsaw puzzle
Patchwork, for me, is always about finding or defining connections. Puzzling things out, making sense of things, piecing things together from a few clues. The joining of fragments, little flashes from the past, collecting memories into one place. Because we are our memories, to a certain extent. When we lose the ability to remember, our sense of self feels less secure because the thread that holds us between past and present is broken. We end up losing ourselves along with the unremembered experiences. I think of patchwork as a kind of holding together.
patchwork in progress
I like to piece patchwork in the evenings while watching TV or listening to music. Nice relaxing thing to do.
And that would be fine, except there’s already a nice relaxing evening job in progress. I either have to finish that before I can get to the patchwork, or I have to put that down (again) to work on the piecing.
If you’ve been with me a while, you might recall the beginnings of A Long Life, which has become the current evening project. I started it a couple of years ago and have been picking it up and putting it down ever since.
A Long Life
It’s about six inches wide, and when it’s finished will contain 30,000 stitches. I have no idea how long it is – I won’t measure it until it’s done – but I do know that currently it carries 18,788 stitches. Yes, I count them as I go along.
A Long Life
I change colour for every decade (every 3,500 stitches or so) and change thread for the start of each new year. Factoring in leap years, when it’s had its thirty-thousandth stitch, it will represent the number of days in the life of someone who is just over 82. I have no idea why I’m doing this.
details from A Long LifeA Long Life rolled up
On top of that I have a couple of other possible big projects whirring away in the background, one of which might be a new online course on zero-waste stitching (aka Using All the Scraps).
Definitely playing a game of Tetris with time here. Move one thing up to make room for another thing, and so on more or less indefinitely. Good job I like to be busy.
The last day of May and another monthly block complete on this year’s stitch journal, marking time and witnessing the passage of days.
the year so far
May always feels like quite a long month to me but they all fly by in the end.
31 days in May
No real plan, as always. Just threading a needle and placing a few stitches every day. Watching what happens.
May, detail
Some of the stitches end up looking like footprints. Which is just what they are, really. Steps along tracks and paths that lead somewhere.
May, detail
People often ask about the curly/loopy stitching around the edge of some of the blocks. It’s just silk boucle yarn couched down with a fine thread. Nice effect with very little effort.
May detail
I’m easing into a more summery palette for this middle section of the year.
May, detail
As usual, I don’t always like every single block. It doesn’t matter. Each block only functions as a witness; it doesn’t have to be beautiful. We can’t undo the moments or go back in time and change the past, which is why I don’t ever unpick the stitches I don’t like. It is what it is, we acknowledge its faults, and we move on. As soon as each stitch is completed, it becomes part of the past and therefore can’t be altered. It can be very therapeutic to accept the imperfections.
The other side always interests me. In some cases I prefer it.
I got ever so slightly sidetracked from what I started last week. I had to interrupt proceedings to deal with the scraps box, which was overflowing (and I forgot, in my distraction, to obtain photographic evidence of said abundance, but I know you’ve all seen an overflowing scraps box before, and I bet most of you have one of your own). I need the scraps box for something else right now, and that was a whole other sidetracking experience, cutting out lots and lots of paper piecing scraps. The scraps box is now temporarily a patchwork-pieces box, holding it all together.
temporary change of function for the scraps box
I sorted the scraps pile into lots of smaller collages where every tiny fragment will have its place.
delicious fabric scraps
I’ve also rounded up some very tiny/narrow strips and offcuts – selvedges, hems, seams, rolled hems from chiffon scarves etc) – all of which can – and will – be used.
can we use them? Yes we can
The tiny strips can be stitched across the collaged pieces quite effectively:
layered scraps and narrow strips
There are a few little collages so far; these are about 4 or 5″ square:
collaged scraps
I’m thinking of them as spots of time, a la Wordsworth (yes, Wordsworth again – no better poet, in my view, for exploring themes of experience, loss, and memory). In his long poem The Prelude, Wordsworth describes spots of time as moments that become profound memories with the capacity to rejuvenate and repair. I think most of the square collages might become round eventually:
collaged fabrics under a circular viewfinder
This one I think might just be complete as it is:
layered scraps, very simply stitched, about 5″ square
A square spot of time perhaps. I guess memories come in all shapes and sizes.
Spare a thought for poor birdie, though. I will be dismantling his nest.
This year’s overall plan was for it to look something like an aerial view of fields, a visual depiction of time and space. Each block is time taking up space, a few stitches marking the minutes that make up a life as well as a dimensional area on the cloth.
April daily stitching
I don’t generally set out to depict ‘an event’ or anything representing what happened that day. It’s usually just a few stitches to mark the passing of that time.
April daily stitching, detail
It’s not meant to be a way of remembering the minutiae of daily life, but a bigger picture of the way time (mostly) passes without us even noticing. It’s the opposite of ‘wasting time’, if there can be such a thing. It’s about noticing and honouring time, because time is what allows us to be present here and now.
April detail, random swirly back stitch with silk perle 8
And really there’s no such thing as ‘now’. As soon as you’ve formed the concept of ‘now’ the moment has passed, to be replaced by another, different moment. And you can’t grasp that one either before it disappears to be replaced by another. The moments continue, if we’re lucky, for some years until they cease. Time really is all we have, from our limited human perspective. It’s days in a life, unbelievably fragile yet tenacious.
April detail
I don’t know anything about cosmic time, or astrophysics, or geographical time, but I do know time definitely seems to speed up as you get older. Stitching it down doesn’t make any difference, but I suppose it probably makes me feel a bit better about it. I still don’t know where it goes.
April, the other side
If you’re interested in learning how to make something similar, my online course is available here.
One day ends and a new one begins in the unbroken chain of time that makes up our life. It really doesn’t matter what day you begin this kind of practice; all the days join up regardless of the occasion.
1st January in progress
This year I’m using my 2024 template, which I’m imagining as a kind of map of the year. I sometimes think if life came with a map we’d probably all get to where we want to be a lot more efficiently. But I guess efficiency isn’t everything and I’m glad I ended up taking the long way round – the scenic route, I suppose we might call it.
As always, there is no plan apart from the template; each day will decide for itself what it wants to be. This practice, for me, has always been about witnessing the passage of time rather than marking events or occasions. I don’t often feel the need to remember what happened on a given day; it’s enough to know that I acknowledged the time passing.
I have no idea how this cloth will look by the end of December, but then I have no idea how my life will look by then either. It will be a voyage of discovery and an adventure as always.
a beginning
I’m using the same vintage metis (linen/cotton blend) as the last two years. You can often find this kind of fabric online by searching for vintage metis, or vintage French bed sheet. I’ve only just noticed that I’ve left it in its natural state, whereas last year I dipped it in tea to dull the whiteness a little. I’ve marked my outlines with plain old biro, because I know all the lines will be covered. If you’re stitching along and (for example) you want to leave gaps between the blocks, then you will want to use a less obtrusive method for marking out your daily sections.
To begin, I’ve done a very simple whipped running stitch in perle 12 cotton and silk, with a fine textured yarn couched around the edge, to suggest a ploughed field ready for sowing some seeds.
day one: running stitch in cotton, whipped with silk thread
I’m easing back into work-mode from tomorrow and will be thinking about all the seeds of ideas that might take root. I hope some wildflowers blow in as well.
The end of September already. October tomorrow. It really will be Christmas before we know it. No use getting ahead of ourselves here though.
September daily stitching
I think the hag stones thing turned out OK in the end. Berries, apples, or pears would have worked equally well.
early September
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.
mid- to late-September
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 end of September
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…
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.
patchwork shapes
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.
patchwork in progress
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 planprogress 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.
