Book Review: Claire Wellesley-Smith 'Slow Stitch'

This is a book that has the expansion of time as its essence. Not the creation of time, as in there is never enough, but in the understanding that time has personal boundaries, as much as it does impersonal boundaries.

To take moments of your day in order to not contemplate what you didn’t achieve yesterday, and what you will have to try and achieve tomorrow, to let the moment of ‘now’ wash over you as the only moment, to worry less, and smile more at simple procedures of contentment, this is at the core of Slow Stitch.

Slow Stitch, or to give it its full title Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art, is a newly published book by the textile artist Claire Wellesley-Smith. Claire teaches extensively, working in adult education, schools, community-based projects, museums, and galleries. She runs workshops that involve the ideas of sustainable stitch, repurposed cloth, and traditional techniques of hand production.

It is no surprise therefore, that her new book Slow Stitch, should concentrate on the self-same ideas of sustainability, repurposing, and the techniques of hand production that can be brought into the world of textile art.

To understand Slow Stitch is to understand calmness, contemplation, and mindfulness. To understand these, and more importantly, to integrate them into our lives, is to understand that it is OK to unwind a little, that it is OK to place the demands of the twenty-first century to one side, at least for part of your day.

Stitch, and the art of hand stitch is a great and simple means in which to enter the world of the momentary, of the mindful and contemplative world of calmness. The repetitive rhythm of stitch, producing single moments one after the other, can be likened to listening to the ocean waves, to taking note of slow and steady breathing, the beat of the planet.

It is an exercise in purposeful motions, of creating moments, rather than being led by them. Creating stitch, is creating a path, creating a set of elements that can remove you from the world of the twenty first century.

It is measured time, whether self-measured, or measured by the task, it becomes the same thing in the end. Through a range of parts and chapters Claire shows us how so many aspects of textile art can easily be slowed down, treated with respect and calmness.

She shows us how taking note of time, energy, the place that you inhabit while working, can all have an effect on the process, and the result of the process.

Whether working with local materials, repurposing old textiles, natural dyeing, the use of hand stitch and other traditional techniques, all add and accumulate, all move the maker and artist in a direction that has purpose, has meaning.

Claire includes in her book a range of practical projects such as stitch journals, mapping local walks in stitch and found objects, and working with other artists, all part of an attempt to seriously encourage textile artists, or those artists who choose to integrate an element of textile art into their work, to make reconnections with their love of textiles, with their local culture and their local environment, all for the betterment of creativity.

Book Review: Alice Fox 'Natural Processes in Textile Art'

The embroiderer and textile artist Alice Fox has produced an excellent new book entitled Natural Processes in Textile Art. To give some idea of the field of exploration that Alice’s new book covers, its sub-heading is From Rust Dyeing to Found Objects.

Working within natural processes, and projecting those processes through the discipline of textile art, Alice shows how to work creatively with your immediate environment, whether by using raw materials that have been gathered from seashore or garden, woodland, or city street.

Alice encourages by example, her book shows through simple explanations, how to work in time with natural processes, bringing together the rhythms, complexity, as well as the simplicity of nature into textile art.

The book covers such processes as eco dyeing with garden fruits, seaweed and other easily gathered raw materials. Alice shows how using embroidery as a natural process can become an integral part of the work rather than an imposed embellishment, she shows that weaving with beachcombed fibres can add integrity and provenance to a composition, and how printing with found objects can add a depth and direction to the working process.

Alice encourages the fostering of a real connection with nature in order to help the creative process. The integration of nature as a driving force in the process of making has become an increasingly important part of the contemporary creative world, and no more so than in textile art.

With the textile industry and its subsidiary industries still being one of the planets largest polluters and degraders of the natural environment, it has become a particularly pressing concern for designers, as well as artists who involve themselves with textiles, to start looking for alternatives to the norm.

Of particular concern is the use of chemical dyes, their strength, reliability, and endurance once seen as a positive step forward in the world of textiles,  is now being seen as a liability at best, a contribution to ecological degradation at worst.

The rise in local dyeing, in personal dyeing development, particularly amongst textile artists, has produced a whole movement of experimentation in materials, from leaves and flowers, to fruit and vegetables, from metals, to teas and coffees.

Experimentation seems to be the order of the day and Alice encourages, through examples, the fostering of a theme of exploration, of taking a personal journey through the realm of raw materials.

All traditional textile processes, whether dyeing, sewing, weaving, and others, can be supplemented or even replaced by materials both ordinary, and indeed extraordinary, that can be found in the natural environment, from fibre for weaving and sewing that can be harvested from the natural world, from grasses, leaves, and plants, to fishing line washed up on a shoreline, all can be used as material, for use in the process and composition of work. All that is ever really needed is imagination, and of course that is an endless and always renewable resource for the artist.

To scavenge and forage is part of the human condition, it was a large part of our lives for much of our human history. Hunters and gatherers combed the environment for the useful as well as the intriguing, and the ornamental, and although we may seem to be far removed from our early ancestors, we are not as far removed as we sometimes believe ourselves to be.

There is much to be foraged and collected both in the natural and urban environments that can be used as a stimulus for artwork, as well as being integral to the working process. So for example, Alice encourages the collection of leaves, nuts, seeds, lichens, and feathers from woodland, shells, seaweed, plastic twine, and pebbles from the seashore, as well as bottle tops, screws, rubber bands, squashed cans, train tickets and more from the urban environment.

Alice is keen for us to not dismiss what could be used as potential, merely because we have never before considered it. To use your imagination, to think about how you could perhaps incorporate the environment around you within your work, is to express that environment, to see its potential, and to celebrate its life.

Of course, Alice does make it clear that gathering within the natural environment in particular, has to be done with caution and with understanding. To be in harmony with the environment, to use the gifts of nature, does not mean denuding that same environment. Some plants now have legal protection against random harvesting, and when you are free to collect and harvest, Alice encourages you to show moderation, with nuts and berries for example, you are often sharing a crop with the wildlife who depend on what you are harvesting to sustain them, either immediately, or through the long winter.

It is all a matter of empathy and understanding. If you are going to use the environment around you then it is a good idea to try and make sense of that environment, to see it as a complicated interaction between countless species, of which you are one. By all means gather raw materials for your work, but remember that you are only one of the creatures in the complexity, so show compassion to your fellow spirits, be generous, and the environment will be generous back.

Natural Processes in Textile Art includes examples of the work of a number of leading artists who are well known within the field of eco textile processes, whether that be through dyeing, construction, printing, stitching.

Although this book is aimed at textile artists, and those wanting to pursue or expand their repertoire within the textile field, it is also an invaluable resource for anyone wanting to include and incorporate an element of textiles within their own work, so would be ideal for those working in some of the connected disciplines such as mixed media, basketry, jewellery, ceramics, and as far afield as 3D sculpture and fine art painting.

A great book to own, and a great resource in which to look for other means of approaching the world of making.

Next Steps in Weaving by Pattie Graver

Weaving has got to be one of the oldest of human occupations, countless generations have been honing and perfecting their skills across millennia, and continue to do so to this day.

Although industrial weaving now dominates the textile industry, hand weaving is still an important element within the textile world, it has an enviable status and position, and is often considered one of the senior skills within the many that make up the varied textile world.

That hand weaving is still very much with us, still a learnt skill, has much to do with the individuals that have been involved in the hand-weaving world, those who work within hand-production, and just as importantly, those who teach and in teaching, pass on the accumulated skills gathered from seemingly countless generations.

Teaching hand skills in order to bring enjoyment to one generation, and to pass on learnt skills to the next, is an important part of the story of hand craft in any discipline. Without teachers, generational skills would soon shrivel up and die, which is why individuals such as Pattie Graver are so important.

Pattie is a weaver who lives her passion. She sees weaving as being part of the essence of who we are, an integral part of our history, as well as our present-day culture, and therefore in many ways a birth-right to us all, and one that she can share with us if we wish to follow her into the world of weaving.

As a former Managing Editor of Handwoven magazine, Pattie was always well-placed to understand the passionate interest so many in our contemporary world have shown for learning basic, as well as more complex skills involved in hand-production. it is one of the main reasons for the publication of her brand new book Next Steps in Weaving.

This is a book that makes the fundamental practical understanding of weaving, its main drive. It is definitely a technical book, and one that makes the assumption that you have at least some prior knowledge of weaving. As the main title suggests, the book covers the next steps beyond the initial ones of warping up, and answers the often-used question of new weavers, where do I go next?

Pattie has added a useful subheading to her book What you Never Knew you Needed to Know, which very much sums up the emphasis of Next Steps in Weaving. There are main chapters that deal with weave structures and ideas such as twill, color-and-weave, overshot, summer and winter, lace. It also contains a seemingly infinite supply of sub-headings that cover everything that you could possibly want to know about moving forward with weaving projects. Diagrams, color photos, tips, and troubleshooting suggestions also abound, so it would be hard for anyone to lose their way when attempting any of the different sections within Patties book.

Each topic within the book is explained, and then supplemented with instructions for both a woven sample, as well as a more complex project. this is definitely not a book just giving a list of weaving patterns, it is a book that is meant to give you more experience, and with that, more confidence, which inevitably leads to being the springboard for personal projects.

Overall, this is a book for the enthusiastic learner, for the beginner who has passed through the very first initial steps of weaving, and who wants to move fully into the discipline, but it is also a book for those that want to make a connection with the past, as well as to make connections with the future. Pattie has produced an invaluable book that promotes, encourages, and projects her obvious love and affinity towards hand weaving.

This is an invaluable addition to nay hand weaver's reference library, and anyone buying the book will know that with Pattie they are in safe hands.

Coming in at 183 pages, Pattie's book is available from major outlets such as Amazon, as well as Interweave, who have generously published Pattie's book.