Good morning,
As I write up these notes, I am also keeping on eye on a large pot of onion skins simmering on the stove. There is a plan to dye a pale beige summer dress. My thinking is that if I dye it a deeper colour I am more likely to wear it layered when the weather is not so hot. We had a terrific summery day yesterday, followed by rain overnight and now the gardens are deeply green and full of birdsong. One day of rain will not be enough to fill the local streams that are reduced to muddy tracks, but at least the rain will help keep my roses thriving without me having to water constantly (they grow in pots).
Just checking the onion skins - they are fine.
This week I am going to share with you some notes on how I came to be a stitch artist, of some kind, or various kinds. I cannot cover every question I often get asked, but I hope this will give an introduction. I am sharing here some photos of old work from the archives. Photo quality reflects my camera at the time - grateful for newer tech these days.
brooches from 2013
It was never my intention to be an embroiderer, a person who draws with a sewing machine. My first sewing machine experiences were not promising. I was given an antique singer hand-cranking machine for Christmas when I was about twelve. Don’t remember asking for one but I got it and was immediately frustrated by my inability to remember how to thread it up correctly. I did learn eventually. Let’s gloss over the sewing lessons at school, the ra-ra skirt that took me a whole term to not put a zip into…. And then I am a young mum with no time at all to sew but for whatever reason I find myself in a John Lewis shop and my then-partner buys me a machine. It is a lovely shiny electric machine and it sits idly for many months.
Then life happens and eventually children are at school for some of the day, and I sit at the sewing machine and teach myself how to work it. I am bored with going in straight lines and have read somewhere in the instruction manual that if you ‘lower the dog feed’ the machine will be able to stitch in ‘free motion’. These things sound like something out of an Elizabethan spell book and this is enough to have me actually follow instructions (the Elizabethan influence will somehow prevail as things go on).
I am not one for following instructions, which is why I will always be a basic knitter, a modest baker and hopeless at putting flat pack furniture together. It is a lot to do with my stubborn insistence that I should be able to do this with some prior knowledge, even if that prior knowledge does not exist. It is also that I simply think following instructions is boring and cheating, except perhaps when taking lifesaving medication.
Having lowered the dog feed on my sewing machine (all it needed was a switch to be slid to one side on the back of the machine) I could then see my machine was no longer held in straight line mode. The stitch could be very much like drawing. All I needed was a clear foot instead of the standard metal. The clear foot allows the stitcher to see where they are going, of course, but I see no reason why a clear foot is not standard on all machines.
At this point I had no real ideas on what to stitch and draw. I doodled and wrote. I think writing in stitch felt very liberating and special, because I could think of phrases as I stitched and words came to me mid-flow.
handwritten stitched work - 2008
Checking on onion skins - turned them up a bit.
Stitching on felt - 2007
I found that I needed to layer up fabric to get the right tension and soon discovered my handmade felt was a good material to stitch upon. Inspired by some work I had seen at a local craft fair, I had been experimenting with acid dyeing wool and making handmade felt. One of my daughter’s birthday parties became a big felt making session and we had pasting tables outside on the lawn and children getting their hands soapy, which was actually quite a successful party - I would recommend as it takes time up and does not involve having to adjudicate prizes.
Stitching on felt is an interesting way of slowing down the stitch - the wool fibres give the needle a little more work to do. Depending on the thickness of the felt, the stitch will be partially embedded rather than sitting on top. A woven fabric has different challenges, as it will distort according to the direction in which you stitch. All of this I learned through a lot of play. I could have gone to an afternoon class and learned it all, I suppose, but instead I sat by myself and played for many odd hours. This gave me time to think about what it was I really wanted to say in stitching.
Charmed lives of the Broken Hearted - a piece stitched in 2009
Figure drawing has always appealed to me, faces, organic forms and ghostly figures have echoed in my sketchbooks, doodles and drawings of all kinds over decades. I have always felt haunted by the people who show up in my drawings, but in a good way. They are ancestors I will never know in the flesh, guardians, dreaming figures passing through, lost friends. Time has never been linear for me and that is now something I hear scientists believe too. Moments are fleeting and yet last forever, life happens all at once, many lives echo. Who has not looked at their family tree (if you look at your ancestry) to see patterns of experience?
Checks on onion skin - looking good.
And so began a long and winding-the-bobbin-a-million-times journey in stitches. I was fortunate to have the machine and some pockets of time to just draw and discover. My interest in history, time and women’s lives has led me to develop my own distinctive style of drawing with a sewing machine. I hope my work is now very much my own, but of course to begin with I did look to other embroiderers, including the many anonymous artists of the past. As for contemporary stitch artists, I was interested in the work of Alice Kettle. Her work is made on a much greater scale and depth than I ever wished to work, but she is also interested in the figure in storytelling. I have also been influenced, graphically and thoughtfully, by the drawings of Madge Gill, an artist I studied as a student. Her work came back through to me, years on, as I explored stitching with a machine.
Shakespeare’s Sisters - 2012 (love this and wish I had it - but so grateful someone bought it - as I am always so grateful that people have supported my creative journey over the years!)
These days I stitch in a way that feels very innate and personal. I sit at my machine and we are in control of each other in a way that feels organic. It is almost as if the machine has adopted my ways and style of working, which is not at all conventional - and now, of course, the feed dog is stuck down and cannot be raised. No matter how I might wish to return to conventional straight lines my machine has other ideas….
There is so much more that can be said about my embroidery, drawing with a machine. But I hope this gives an introduction to answer some questions I get asked.
I am currently working on a new collection of spring-into-summer embroidery portrait brooches and this will be in my shop this coming Wednesday. I hope you may enjoy seeing them - I have a lot more stitching to do in the next few days.
I will write more about my stitching in the future, no doubt.
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Notes from this week
Swifts have returned to the neighbourhood - I walked to the local shop yesterday about midday and many swifts were flying above the rooftops. After a while the sound of them each day can become a little monotonous, almost, and then they are gone for the year and that is always sad. So I will enjoy them as much as possible.
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Washing dishes and watching sparrows in the garden, door open to have the bird volume at max, I notice many tiny soapy bubbles all about me. I look down into the sink and realise the bubbles are not coming from here but elsewhere. Enchanted, I step outside to see them drifting across the fence. Later, I look from the landing window to see my neighbours have a bubble machine - for their dog.
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Getting seriously into cross stitch - unsurprisingly I am not so interested in following other people’s designs/patterns. I will look at antique samplers. I love stitching alphabets. I love the idea of ghostly alphabets in pale colours so that they are almost not visible - as well as colourful samplings.
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Took the onion skins off the stove - very dark colour, hope this works! Will let you know…
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Thank you always for reading here. I am grateful for all your kind comments and sharing. If you liked these notes please ‘like’ so that I know and share with friends - these emails are sent free to anyone who subscribes. If you would like to show support by buying me a coffee that would be lovely and much appreciated.
Really enjoyed reading about how you became a stitch artist. Very inspiring!
Lovely. Thank you.