Exploring my Archive
And a nod to Taylor Swift
I’ve been stitching for so long my stitching has Eras: 1993 to City and Guilds (C&G), C&G 1996 to 2002, 2002 to January 2021, January 2021 to January 2026 and now Rediscovery. For some time now I’ve been taking apart any unfinished textile notebooks to add any samples I come across to an 84 litre box I describe as my archive. There’s no order to what’s in the box, I add bits and pieces, pull stuff out and put it back. It recently reached the point where I couldn’t get anything more in it. As I’m reconsidering my textile practice tidying and sorting the box made good sense. I need to do the same with my works in progress(wips).
My initial objective was simply to tidy the box to fit in more bits and pieces, I found myself sorting through the stitching. As I was to discover there’s a lot to be learnt from looking at past work. I started putting things that related to each other together, remembering how I’d made particular samples, putting fragile pieces into containers. Most stitching went straight back into the box, some pieces were put aside as backgrounds for further stitch, others that I was really drawn to were put together in to groups. Each group fitted into one of my eras, except the first one.
C&G was represented by samples using transparent paper, fabrics and silk paper. Worked in white/ cream fabrics and materials with hand and machine stitch, these are all edges, intended to show finishing techniques for working with transparency. Looking at these now it feels incredible I created pieces that are so delicate, yet have real strength as pieces of work.
2002-2021, I set aside 3 very different projects, the first looked a bit like the C&G piece, mostly layers of delicate fabrics inspired by drawings of Clary Sage. Initially worked in transparent fabrics, adding opaque fabrics in tiny pieces until I used transparent fabric and stitch with my mum’s hand knitting (not shown). This group of work seems too refined to be mine.
The next is a small hand made sketchbook containing a variety of drawings and samples linked to photographs of teasels. The variety of drawings and stitching is incredible, I explored several techniques in detail. Had life not changed suddenly this would have been a set of samples that was concluded with a final piece of work.
The last group in this trio is a set of pieces that explored using simple hand stitch to create pieces from a single design source using the same stitch to create different stitch patterns. As well as the stitching I explored repeating the design using a layout app on my phone. I couldn’t resist moving into machine stitch to play with a new sewing machine. I know there are at least 3 large pieces of work that relate to this project amongst my wips that need to be completed.
January 2021 to January 2026 is represented by weaving. I spent about 18 months teaching myself how to weave, exploring ideas and loving it. I created a substantial amount of samples, tried different ideas and materials. The breadth of this exploration was astonishing and aimed at one thing, learning. At some point I’ll return to weaving, for now I have other textiles to consider.
These 5 groups of work clearly tell me something, I’m happiest with my work when I research my subject matter, when I put time into exploring and playing, creating multiple pieces by trying multiple ideas from the same source. It also shows how much my practice benefits from having my photographs as inspiration or a starting point. I’ve also learnt from this, that by and large when I work on my own, in my own way, I create strong work.
What of the current era? There’s things to learn from my feelings about my archive, the discovery of inspiring stitching to inform a current project, a circular working process: research, explore, play, create and reflect rather moving on quickly. When viewed as a circular diagram my cycle is way of returning to any stage in the creative process, allowing for deeper explorations and significant learning. I’ll close my post with that diagram.
