Stitch meditation

Hovering between hand and machine embroidery, between the real and the imagined, between colours, threads and textures, has been the way I have worked for all of my embroidered life. Stitch meditation has been my salvation in the last few years. Hand stitching is repetitive and can be meditative. The rhythm of embroidering can be used as a calming strategy.

Hand embroidery was my first love. My mother patiently taught me to stitch, embroidering a Semco d’oyley, patterned with pansies was the first thing I recall stitching, while sitting on the green settee. I still grow purple pansies.

With six children in our family, I now wonder if it was about having my mother all to myself. One-on-one with a working mother in the 1960s could have been the attraction to making textiles. Both my parents would die by the time I was fifteen. As a teenager, I found the soothing rhythm of stitching gave me