Tag: embroidery

Pieceful Worlds Clothing > embroidery

Beginning Again

Posted on by Mollie

Since last year sometime I have been playing around with the idea of stitch meditations. ( Not my idea , TY Liz Kettle for the inspiration ) This is where you take just a few moments to select a few fabrics and string to work with and then take 30ish minutes to create a small piece for the mere sake of stitching . Using the cloth and string along with your breath to bring the awareness back to the now. You are not supposed to remove or correct stitches but rather accept the finished piece as is,which is a lesson in letting go which most artists , and let’s be honest most humans could use.

Last year I began with good intentions around the end of January but sometime around the end of the school year I feel off track. With kids at home, and a business to run I had trouble carving out time in my day to just stitch without an end in mind . Since then I have been doing some therapy and have come to realize that my mental health suffers when I do not make time for just me, so I began this year with a determination to start again. Just a few minutes at the start or end of every day to come back to the now. A few minutes a day to let my mind work thru the events of the day, or perhaps make a solid plan of attack to get thru an especially hard day to come. Better than traditional meditation for me at this point in my life because keeping my hand active allows my mind the freedom to roam . Using stitch with breath , as you move with your breath in yoga brings awareness to your body and calm to the mind and heart. Some days I find I stitch more than others but I am coming to accept that ebb and flow just as my other appetites and needs fluctuate throughout the day, or month, or year, or even lifetime.

So today is February 1st and I am happy to day that I did achieve all 31 meditations for January 2020 and while I have not made one yet today I have every intention to continue this journey as I am learning so much about myself as I go. Here is a look at my pieces for January and I will leave you with a poem that came to me while stitching one day last week that encapsulates how I feel about the process .

Solace comes in quiet moments

Cloth and thread in hand.

Breath and needle work in time,

Stitches piling up like tiny grains of sand.

A push , a prick , a pull , a breathe

The rhythm of my day.

Inhale , exhale stitch , repeat

Mending mind as well as cloth along the way.

The inner turmoil of my thoughts come to rest in moving hands.

Untieing snarls and tangles,

from both thread and muscle bands

Colliding Worlds

Posted on by Mollie

I have been looking for  a while now for a way back to handwork. When you create for a living you tend to make what sells / what you have orders for, instead of simply creating for the joy of the creation. True this method keeps the kids fed but it doesn’t exactly fuel an artist soul. I have been longing for a piece that would drive me to do something I have never done before. I want to combine different forms of fiber art into one piece. I just needed the right blank canvas to start with. At my last big show of the year I think I finally found it. The piece is not new I made it several months ago, but it got hung up a different way than it had before and the new perspective spoke to me. This is a piece that I am especially excited to work with because it is one I dyed start to finish by myself. Most of our tie dyed pieces are done with myself and my husband in conjunction; he ties and I dye. But this is a solo piece tied and ice dyed by me. It is also the first time I had done multiple spirals in a piece and been pleased with the outcome.   So I have decided to “live” with it for a minute and see where it leads me. I have hung it up on the free wall of our bedroom so it is the first thing I see each day and the last each night. I am hoping that in this way I will be inspired as to where to take it from here. I know I want to quilt it with some hand embroidery…. I think I will start by creating a backing fabric , something ice dyed with gorgeous splits ….. Feel free to follow along as it becomes. I am creating a creation blog on our website and this will be my first project. I plan to show you step by step how this piece comes to life. It will be my most involved art piece to date as I hope to incorporate some of each branch of the fiber art tree that has been my life as an artist.  So, here it is in it’s beginning stages. I haven’t decided what I will call it, so for now it is just the ” Art piece “.