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Thursday, January 02, 2014

Happy New Year!

Resolutions? Word of the year? Goal statements? Nope, none of the above. Though having decided that it would be useful to record what I did achieve last year I realise that I should make recording what I complete this year a target as I have no record of 2013!

2014 looks like being a good year for stitching. There are some exciting exhibition opportunities coming up, a couple of retreats in the diary as well as some interesting challenges in the offing. Reading through the latest issue of the Contemporary Quilt newsletter I could be kept busy by the challenges in that alone!

One thing I have decided to explore is a hand stitching project that is visited regularly. Kathy Loomis wrote, just before Christmas, about her weekly/daily stitching projects and I found her reasoning behind these projects really appealing. I've tried a weekly project before and abandoned it very quickly. I made it far too complicated and found myself, as ever, focussing far too much on my technique. Subsequent conversations made me realise that I needed something where I could identify an end to a period of stitching and which wouldn't leave me disappointed with myself if I failed to meet a day's target ( My own sense of failure is a sure trigger to make me give up!)

Enter the hand stitch project. The fabric is cut into small pieces 5"x4", and I'm using just one length of thread to 'complete' the stitching. But how often? I've 54 pieces so that's one a week with a couple spare. I'd like to think that I'll do one a day whilst I'm at home but I know that is unlikely so completing the pile in a year will be good enough for me!

And a few that I've completed as a test run!

 

3 comments:

Heather Dubreuil said...

I'm very taken with your little hand-stitched pieces. Do you think they may eventually be sewn together to make a single piece, or perhaps at least mounted together for display as a single piece?

Linda B. said...

Heather asked about my intention for the future of these little pieces.
I like that they are not square and had thought to join them together with strips of fabric attached to the short side. But I love it when a question leads to another idea - the potential for developing them as individual pieces is intriguing and something that I will definitely explore. Thanks Heather!

Sandra Wyman said...

Love this idea Linda - may have to do something similar - you are such an inspiration! Happy New Year!