In early December I planned out all the work I needed to do.  An exhibition in February means work has to be ready for framing … around now actually.  It was all perfectly possible on paper.  But it’s one thing to block out time on a plan and write “stitch work”, for example, and quite another to actually do it.  In the studio I surveyed the pile of work I needed to finish and felt slightly terrified.  

A deadline is a wonderful thing for getting focused.  I dropped or deferred everything that did not contribute to getting the work done (including this blog) and settled down to work.  Apart from a couple of days with my family, I stitched all the way through Christmas.

It goes something like this.  I pull out each piece of work and lay it on my studio table.  In this case I had already stitched them all to a backing fabric.  Canvas this time (I had my reasons but never again – my poor fingers).  I lay out different threads on top of the work until I have a palette I want to work with.  Silk, rayon, cotton – some matte, some shiny.  Mostly very fine in weight.  I look at the piece of work for a clue as to what to do and where to start. 

Mostly I work with the marks on the cloth, sometimes I work against them or look to add marks where there are none.  I will have an idea what I want but not usually a plan for the whole piece when I start.  I will know where I want the emphasis to be but otherwise I will ask myself as I am working what the piece needs. 

Occasionally there is a piece where I don’t know what to do.  When there is a type of mark I haven’t worked with before.  Or the marks in the cloth are so subtle that I am really not sure what to add – or whether to add anything at all.  In this case I just try something.  If it doesn’t work, I pull out the stitches and try something else.  Change thread.  Larger stitches.  Smaller ones.  A different kind of mark.  Dense layers of marks – or sparse and widely spaced. I take photographs – sometimes it’s clearer what you need to do when you look at an image of it.   

For two weeks I worked like this for six to ten hours a day.  I listened to music or radio documentaries.  Sometimes I worked in silence.   If this sounds relaxing, I can’t say that it was.  There was a tension between the slow, patient hand work and the underlying sense of pressure to get everything done.   This was a consequence of working to a tight schedule, not the experience of slow stitch.  And there wasn’t time to play around or experiment too much. 

As I worked, ideas came to me – things I want to try.  Not just stitch ideas.  I jotted them down in my sketchbook so as not to lose them and kept working.  I was mildly frustrated that I couldn’t afford the time to stop and do other things.  Which made me ponder the value of both work and play.  I remembered how earlier in the year I was frustrated that I didn't know what to do and was not “working” and used play and experimentation to keep myself going.  The work I am doing now derived from that period.  

Anyway I am now preparing a pile of finished work for the framer.  I have some admin things to do but otherwise I will soon be through this phase of work.   Then I am going to do something else for a while.   

Exhibition details:

I will be showing some of this new work in an exhibition alongside paintings by Stephanie Stow and Elaine Cox at Bircham Gallery in Holt, Norfolk from Saturday 13 February until 9 March. 

I also currently have some work in a mixed show at The Bank in Eye, Suffolk.  The exhibition, Abstraction of Form, runs from Tuesday 19 January until 28 February.