Tangled, random, expressive stitching
In the slow meandering of time, stitch by stitch, perhaps through tangled thoughts and random emotions, we can express...
“Did you ever think of hand stitching as an extension of your mark making?” my friend Sush texted, after forwarding me a post highlighting the work of fiber artist Beatriz Helton.
“Yep, that’s how I actually started, because I didn’t know how to do hand stitching.” That was before I took a few classes with Julie Booth and learned different techniques and patterns.
Beatriz Helton incorporates instinctual stitching in her work and describes it as “The exploratory journey of the needle and thread making its way through fabric without a plan or expectation of what it will become.”And so I had my prompt for this post, to experiment and express hand stitching in a similar way as I have with mark making. Or to return to that free flowing way of hand stitching without knowing in advance what the stitch marks might be.
In my closet I have two bins of Laos textiles and fabrics. I knew I needed to search in there to see what other fabric I had, and settled on simple natural handwoven cotton. A blank canvas. The note on it said “Tai Baan, Vientiane, Laos, 2020.” That was the last time I was in Laos, which now feels like forever ago.
I chose another skein of natural indigo-dyed hand spun cotton thread as well. It was slightly thicker than what I had been using, and it could easily pass through the loose weave of the natural handwoven cotton.
And I began. Like I do with mark making. Without thinking. The threaded needle passing through and under and up, over and over, here then there, circling back, looping through, and again. And again, yet differently. Threaded needle from under and up, moving and passing, looping through, over and across, circling around, and again. Yet differently, always a bit differently.
Beatriz Helton had chosen the word instinctual to convey how she saw her stitching. But that didn’t seem to fit for my own process, or how I saw it or experienced my own hand stitching. Perhaps there was some natural innate inclination to what I was doing, but different words kept coming to me as I continued stitching – tangled, random, and expressive.
Tangled
Listening to Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, a book about the fascinating world of fungi and their mycelial networks, of course I started thinking about and seeing tangled things then, especially in my hand stitching.
I really liked one of the definitions of tangle: “to unite together confusedly; to interweave as to make it difficult to unravel.” Yes, I thought, that is what I was doing. Making tangled stitches.
When I pulled the thread off its skein, it easily became tangled. Slowing down, seeing where the thread led back to avoided a bigger tangle.
Random
As I continued hand stitching onto other fabric swatches, how I began was always random. In other words, I didn’t envision anything in advance. I just started to make stitching marks. It was like this definition of random: “proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.”
Yet after a while I began to see a visual language develop. And so I went with that, exploring this language in all its forms and sounds, and exceptions and expressions. While the process was less random, the finished piece had the look of random inner thoughts.
It’s often how I would approach mark making. It starts out random, then I see a visual language emerging in the marks, focus on accentuating that, and go in a direction on the page that feels right.
Mark making is fast. The process is very intuitive and generally random. The kinds of marks depends on the tool and medium used, the paper, my mood, and how my hands want to move and feel. It’s a language all its own and I understand it.
Stitching is slow. The process is intuitive and random, yes, but also because it’s slow, things evolve and change in the process. My thinking interferes, random thoughts interject, and control creeps in. Something feels lost in translation and I don’t quite understand. It’s a new language I’m learning.
Expressive
What my tangled random stitching expresses is a certain mood, for a certain moment, and in a certain way that can’t be replicated. It’s uncertain what is being expressed, in a visual language without words, that maybe sounds like or looks like, but maybe isn’t like that at all.
Yet one speaks to me in its gentle tugs, looping embraces, and meandering paths.
Another wiggles, bouncing around and into each other because that’s its movement, awkward as it is.
This one ripples with tiny waves in all directions, contained, yet gentle in its rhythm.
What is it that we need to express. Sometimes we know and it’s clear. Sometimes it’s uncertain. In the slow meandering of time, stitch by stitch, perhaps through tangled thoughts and random emotions, we can finally know.
✻
LouLou
“Tangled, random, expressive stitching” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Ko-fi supporters in December 2022. Now it is public to you, too!
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