In 2015 or was it 2016(?) things were in flux. I was re-evaluating what I was doing, where I was headed, what I wanted… There were a number of things going on that led to this, but it was one of those moments that didn’t seem particularly extraordinary or even interesting, but in hindsight I see that it was a pivotal moment. A moment when I re-found hand stitching.
My mother taught me to embroider with crewel and a hoop at an early age. This is the Christmas creche we made together. It was while making one of those sheep that I came to truly appreciate the diversity and beauty of the simple French Knot done hundreds of times.
Christmas Creche embroidered with my mother
Since then I have gone down many paths, but the hand stitching path is perhaps the most surprising, to me. While at Parsons School of Design I would do anything I could to avoid hand stitching. And then I discovered draping and for a time it was my new love. Draping is a whole art in and of itself. Cutting fabric on the bias and then draping it onto a form and manipulating it so the fabric falls in specific ways was something I loved, but it was also time consuming and I was young and impatient and so my love for draping was set aside.
Funnily enough when I moved to Los Angeles straight out of high school and before I went to Parsons my first job was in a tailor’s shop in Beverly Hills. My favorite thing to do was to sit in the back room with the master tailor, an Armenian man who tried to teach me the fine art of tailoring. Hand stitching hemlines and buttonholes was something I never quite mastered during my time there, but I loved it never-the-less.
Hand stitching can be slow and arduous and very, very time consuming, and it can also be meditative, serene, calming and restorative, depending on one’s perspective. These days I find hand stitching to be all of the latter and none of the former.
A detail of my most recent work hand stitching on Pat Pauly hand dyed linen using Stef Francis threads, Painter’s Threads, House Of Embroidery Threads, Mulberry Bark from Stef Francis, Sari Cording from Stef Francis and wool roving.
When I began hand stitching again I followed other people’s patterns and instructions and while that was interesting and I learned a great deal, it wasn’t completely fulfilling. I have always gone off script and the farther I go, the happier I am. So when I began doing what I call “Improvisational Stitching” I knew I’d fallen into something important. Not only was I creating original pieces that didn’t look like other things I was seeing out in the hand stitching world, but it was an expression of my moods, my thoughts, the things that were going on in my life. Hand stitching is the way I express myself.
A few things I’ve learned through hand stitching, which can be applied to the piece I’m working on, but also to life:
Any emotion is fair game and can be expressed through stitching.
Any emotion is okay and when expressed through stitching creates a vibrant, interesting piece.
Impatience is a frame of mind and a choice.
When I don’t know what to do, stand back, take a photo and get a new perspective on the situation.
Compare and despair.
Everything has its own timeline.
Divas can be fun, but they also can silence everyone else.
Diversity makes anything and everything better.
Rules are helpful, until they’re not, in which case, break them or ignore them.
One of my favorite memories of spending time with one of my brothers, I have three, as a young girl was sitting in the field in front of our house discussing space. This brother went on to become a bio-chemist and is now a professor. He had just introduced me to the concept of infinity and I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea. I remember saying to him, “but that can’t be right.”
He looked at me and smiled, “So what do you imagine it’s like.”
“There’s got to be some kind of barrier or end or something,” I said.
He nodded and said, “Then what’s on the other side?”
My young mind was blown. That moment was both exhilarating and somehow terrifying. I remember our conversation clearly as though it happened just a few days ago. And while he went on to become a scientist, I went in a different direction – the arts, always drawn to color, shape and the different ways one can arrange them to produce visually appealing things, we both continue to be curious, investigate and ask questions.
One of the many things I love about YouTube is that you can go there and ask how to do something and someone has made a video showing you how. Want to change the filter in your air-conditioning unit? There’s a video for that. Want to know how to open up your sewing machine and adjust the thread tension? There’s a video for that. Want to find out how to take a screen shot? There’s a video for that too, and then a whole bunch of other videos will appear on the side bar on that topic or some other topic you’ve searched for in the past, you know just in case you’re curious… The down side is, it’s easy to get lured into watching cute babies and puppy videos, while forgetting all about that washing machine that is now flooding your pantry or kitchen.
And while YouTube is great for showing you how to do things, Quora is great for answering questions such as what do all happily married couples have in common? Or why are some people more curious than others? Why do cats have different color kittens? My husband is a big fan of Quora and often tells me things he’s learned. Inevitably he’ll begin by saying, “Did you know…” and I’ll know he just read whatever it was on Quora. Again it’s a rabbit hole of sorts, where one can emerge hours later knowing all kinds of things you will never use in life or didn’t need to know or worse, didn’t want to know. Still I have learned some useful things as well, such as why virus’s mutate, what it’s like to go to prison from someone who actually spent 10 years inside, okay, perhaps not so useful for me, but it was interesting, rabbit hole, and when and how often to water your cactus. So if you are looking for answers to random questions, YouTube and Quora are there for you. It’s really good to know, they’ve got your back.
Right?
Random photograph of Merlin. As he’s a rescue kitty, we have no idea what his mother or father look like.
Now I have to finish editing my next Youtube Video. ❤️
Every morning my husband and I read something we find interesting and thought provoking, and then we discuss. It’s become a ritual of sorts and has been incredibly helpful, even transformative in many ways. Not least of which is that I so often am reminded of creativity and stitching, and how both are a process and ideally, embraced.
Every day I sit in my little creative room and I stitch. Each day that act of stitching is a new experience, an exploration of the physical, but also of the emotional and even the spiritual. I gather together my materials, usually beginning with colors, and then I either sketch out an idea or just begin stitching something. What’s interesting is that sometimes things just unfold beautifully and without interruption and 45 minutes to an hour later I have something I like or, if I’m really lucky, something I love. But there are other days when that just doesn’t happen. I struggle, I tear out, I undo, redo, undo again. I walk away, I come back, I sketch an idea, I start again. Hours can go by and eventually I end up with something that I’m okay with, although perhaps not thrilled with. Still, I’ve learned to leave it alone and days later I may come back and think – I love this! Or not. The point is, it’s all a process and it’s the process I’ve become increasingly fascinated by and have learned to love.
Circle #42 took 45 minutes start to finish. Circle #44 took several hours… (And I made up a variation on the whipped woven circle that I’ve not seen before, though I do not claim to have invented this, I’ve just never seen it before, so if it exists, it does so without my knowledge of it.)
Each circle has its own personality and each one was a different experience to stitch. What I’ve learned from years of designing is that I must trust the process. I must trust myself. I must trust that if I stick with it, something magical will reveal itself, even if it’s not always in a way that I instantly recognize. It can be said that this is true for life as well.
My Tendril Circle. I can’t remember how long this took, but I had an idea and went with it. There wasn’t any ripping out and beginning again, but rather the steady process of continuing to let it unfold.
Every Wednesday I am devoting a video to creating, designing and the creative process. Those videos can be found ‘here‘. Stay tuned for a new one coming tomorrow!
For seven days I did not step foot outside our loft. Since the pandemic became known as such, I have ventured out only occasionally. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I tested negative to having COVID19 antibodies, and yet, weirdly I was. And perhaps even odder, I felt both relieved and disappointed simultaneously. Disappointed because knowing that I’d been exposed, and weathered it, would have given me some degree of comfort, but now, knowing that I have not, makes me even more inclined to continue my #stayhomestaysafe poster girl endeavors.
Looking south to the Freedom Tower on a beautiful day in Manhattan
Of course there’s always the possibility that the vile of blood I gave was switched mistakenly with someone else’s or the test itself could have given a false negative or… But if I’m being reasonable, chances are I have not been infected. Which is a little surprising considering that I live in New York City, with a population of over 8.5 million people, making each and every one of us likely super spreaders simply by going about our daily routine. A routine that might include, depending upon how active we are, all, or at least a few, of the following: gym, errands such as the post office, grocery shopping, work related meetings, entertainment related outings such as a Broadway show, dance performance, music concert, museum, art gallery, walking the High Line, having dinner with friends or any number of other things one might do in this vibrant, beautiful city I call home.
Looking north to the Empire State Building last Sunday
Everywhere one looks, spring is on full display, inspiring me to think of designs and stitches and colors and shapes.
The beauty of our world continues even as this pandemic rages on. And so does the artistry and creative expression of our fellow humans. My mother sent this to me the other day… Evidently a librarian arranged these books to be read from left to right.
And here are a few of my latest circles that I have been designing, using Sue Spargo’s #Instastitchwithsue project as inspiration for a wool applique 1″ circle and the stitches and threads that embellish it. As Sue will be removing her videos from instagram once the 90 days are over, I have been using my videos to explore threads, stitches and the creative process.
The day before yesterday I came up with this wild looking circle as one of the circles I’m doing, loosely following Sue Spargo’s Toned-Down Circle Sampler 90-day project that she is doing on Instagram. Often I’ve been using a stitch or two that she’s using for that day as a prompt and then seeing what I come up with. This one quickly announced itself as a diva.
The Diva that became my thirtieth circle inspired by the Drizzle Stitch.
Yesterday I posted a video about the creative process and a number of people messaged me privately, and a few publicly, about their process and how it was similar or differed. What struck me when reading other people’s experiences while creating or even just attempting to create is that unless you are one of those people who has felt the brutal horror of indecision, making the wrong choices, battling perfectionism and the inner mean voice, it’s very, very difficult to understand. Those who have experienced it know how awful it can be to constantly question what one is doing. Is it any good? Should I have done it differently? Maybe I’m just not creative, and do it anyway. As a result, I’m going to be doing a weekly youtube video – exploring the creative process; what stalls us, and how to work around those challenges.
The circle I created after the Diva was the backup band in comparison. It was all I could do not to tear it out. However I had no time to redo the whole thing, and part of my efforts to combat my own inner critic is to force myself to leave things that I want to completely redo, alone. This requires sitting with the discomfort and desire to “get it right”, “make it better” and any number of other things I tell myself I’m doing. The discomfort can be, and often is, quite painful. But once done a few times, the next time becomes a bit easier.
The Diva is above the backup singer who is directly below.
All of this is not to suggest that we settle for mediocracy. This has nothing to do with that. This is very specifically about how to move forward when creating.
What are you creating? Is it easy? Difficult? I’d love to hear.
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