Winter does not want to let go here in Northern Indiana, so it is nice to think about a warm week in July, stitching with fellow needle people at Quilting by the Lake, in Auburn, NY. The workshop I am teaching is called Experimental Hand Stitching and we will explore the possibilities and potential of hand stitching in textile artwork.
Standing Amazed: Shape Garden (detail)
For me, these past two years have revealed the restorative nature of stitching by hand—and I will share some of that journey in stitches at QBL. Find out more at https://schweinfurthartcenter.org/qbl-2022-classes/
This detail is from my series Standing Amazed, created with imagery from my previous life as a elementary art teacher in the South Bend public school district. My youngest students were learning to cut paper with scissors and navigate the challenges of working together. My shapes are all in wool, and covered with stitches using perle cotton.
I rarely buy thread in the usual way. Instead, I look for mixed lots on Ebay from estate sales and the stashes of unknown embroiderers. Having a pot-luck of colors and weights in tidy little balls is such a pleasure and challenges me to try less obvious choices sometimes. I recently bid on a large lot from Minnesota and it came with twelve new balls of bright red DMC #8. My latest work is featuring a lot of red stitching, and I love it. I have not solved the thread storage piece yet—I keep the balls in plastic zip bags by weight (so I can see colors at a glance), and have a number of bags stuffed into a lovely basket from Ghana under my work table. I like the idea of thread connecting me to other, unknown makers and finding new purpose in the things I am making. Another recent lot came with a few little “keeper clips” (shown at the bottom of the photo on a ball of blue thread) that I had never seen before. Someone had a great idea on those.
Years ago, a friend gave me a bag of candlewicking thread that she had found in the estate of a neighbor. This four-stranded cotton is not glossy and I have found it very useful for many stitching situations. I don’t know if it is even available new anymore, but I have been able to source a good bit of vintage on Ebay.
And then there is my collection of wool thread—a story for another time!
Here are a few good titles from my recent reading:
Five Tuesdays in Winter (Stories) by Lily King; All the Winters After, by Sere Prince Halverson; Women Talking, by Miriam Toews (five star recommendation); Chemistry, by Weike Wang, These Silent Woods, by Kimi Cunningham Grant, and Trashlands by Alison Stine. An eclectic mix for sure.
