therapy – Dreaming In Stitches

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Well the piece of tapestry that I’ve been working on as my meditation piece is now finished.

I’ve really enjoyed the process with this piece. I think that knowing right from the start that the nature of the canvas would produce quirky and uneven stitches has helped me by removing any imperative to keep it going anywhere in particular.

All along, the feel of the canvas (a piece of upholstery canvas), has been one of my favourite things. Although I am now ready to go back to regular weave, and even probably willing to go back to a frame, the freedom to sew as the piece draped over me was very liberating.

During the working of this piece, I have experimented with Appleton threads and with a few from Renaissance Dying. The addition of these subtle colours to my yarn palette has sent my mind off into new realms. Now that I realise that it is possible to find the type of shades that I particularly want to use, I feel much happier to work on some ideas that would have been too restrictive with the yarns available to me locally.

I do wish it was possible to see the range of Appleton’s wools somewhere near to home – the nearest stockist, although helpful, only has some of the colours and keeps all of them in the stockroom, so you have to tell them the shades you want and then hope they have them.

I’ve been buying the missing shades that I wanted online, which is fine, but I really appreciate being able to see them in the flesh. I know I could buy shade cards, but even then, it’s not always easy to see how one colour might respond to another. I’ve started to dream up a little shop of my own. Who knows, maybe one day.

I’ve experimented a little here with variations and combinations of colours. Some I like and will want to do more with, others aren’t so appealing.

I’ve no idea now what to do with this piece itself. I expect for the time-being at least it will go, rolled up, into the bag I normally put everything into when it’s finished.

We’ve had an emotional few days here. I won’t trouble you with all the details, they wouldn’t really register as a tiny drop in the ocean of many people’s woes, but suffice to say, we’ve had tears aplenty. It’s at times like this, that I find myself sewing, purely for the benefit of the process itself. For me, this really is needlepoint therapy. Somehow, when I pick up my needle and start to fill in the holes in the canvass, a gradual calm comes over me, that can be difficult to find in other ways.

I’ve come to realise that for me this is a kind of meditation. At some point in the process, my mind comes in from the cold and begins to focus. This I find enormously relaxing. The downside is that when I’m in this state of, shall we call it ‘process flow’, I don’t always stick to the design ideas I started out with. This doesn’t bother me at the time that I’m doing it, but sometimes the outcomes aren’t exactly what I’d been expecting.

At the moment, the only really satisfying piece that I’m working on, is the one on the upholstery canvas. I find that the texture – somehow both soft and firm at the same time – is comforting to hold as I work on it, but of course as I knew it would, it bends like crazy. The design is rectangles and lines – a greatly inspired choice I hear you say, for a wonky canvas, but I don’t mind that. The thing is, it’s not really achieving the ‘look’ I’d had in my mind when I started, and I think that’s mainly because I’ve spent more time working on it while I’ve been upset, than perhaps is good for the design.

So, I think I shall make the most of it, by designating this piece my therapy canvas. It won’t matter to me whether or not anybody else likes it, what matters is that by doing it, I’ve been keeping my self together. It’s my self-healing work.