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.
