Healing threads

Oh, look what I found today when I was clearing out some of my work from past years. I had found this design in a magazine, Marie Claire Idées, probably from 2000. I can find the exact month since I have kept most of these magazines in my library. It was the year that I wasn't so well, healthwise and had to close the studio on Maguire in Sillery, Quebec, for a month to undergo some surgery.

Fully aware that I was not going to be able to do a lot of work, I was happy that I had this fun project at my fingertips. The colours suggested in the magazine was in a variegated blue cotton thread, but to be different, I chose one of the variegated pink colours that DMC offers. I worked it on natural coloured linen. One thread, automatic changing tones, different techniques. I could sit quietly and just enjoy the adventure in the stitches and the different textures created in the process without worrying about changing the thread for a change in colour.

I finished the project but I returned to the studio and the business of teaching and taking care of my clients' needs took over. This project just was washed and ironed and left in my storage box waiting to find its final destination. I wasn't sure if I would make it into a cushion or frame it. Here we are, more than 10 years later, rummaging around in my studio here in the forest and I rediscover the project in its box. I chose to frame it simply in a stainless steel frame with a white matting board, just to give it a support so that I can hang and enjoy it.

It is reminiscent of 'art naïf'. A playful design and just the mere activity of focusing on it during my convalescence made me feel better. Embroidery has that therapeutic effect and it certainly worked for me then and continues now as I can see it as I work on other things.

I'm making progress on that beautiful adaptation of a William Morris design which I wrote about several weeks ago. I marvel at the brilliant choice of colours to render the piece alive with lots of movement. I am already thinking on how I could adapt this design to a different technique, using silk threads and the needlepainting. It is exciting work, simultaneously challenging and restful. I start my day with this piece and devote the last hour of the evening to it also.

One of my daughter's closest friends has had his first baby, a little boy. Today, after returning from the memorial for an old friend who died a week ago, I didn't have energy to do much more than organize the final details of a sampler for this new baby, i.e. the name and the date...it was a restful and regenerative exercise. I said goodbye to one dear person and hello to another.

I started working a couple of days ago on an interpretation by Beth Russell of the Orange Frieze by William Morris. The colours really drew me into the project and since William Morris also is the artist of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England (a period in the decorative arts movement that I am particularly interested in) at the turn of the 20th century, it was normal that I would want to work this.

The original design was by John Henry Dearle (1860 -1932) for a firescreen. Beth Russell, British, a contemporary designer of needlepoint, through her brilliant adaptations, provided a cartoon for a bell pull. She intended the project to be executed in wools on a 12 point canvas. I am not partial to working with wool so I have taken the same cartoon and have translated the design on a 28 count antique white linen with DMC floss, using just one strand. The colour selections are beautiful and I am drawn excitedly to work this all through the day. I do not tire of the design, this much due to the selection of colours, a testimony to the taste and talent of Beth Russell.

I have been having difficulty getting into serious projects, but when this happens, I fall on my tried and true ideas and this one has been on my list of 'things to embroider' for a long long while.

It is part of a magnificent collection of historical 'cartoons' dating back to 1932. It is called 'Frise Africaine'.

It is restful to do a monochromatic cross stitch; no need to think of colour, just the need to follow a pattern already calculated and put all my attention into the precision of the technique and the effect of the thread on the linen. I worked this project on a 32 count linen with a dark grey (DMC 3799) thread of cotton floss. The final piece measures no more than 12 cms x 4 cms.

It creates refreshing point of non-colour on my studio wall - a little like ink letters on a fresh page of white paper. Hopefully this therapy, this restful period, will generate the energy I seem to be in need of to return to my more complicated project 'Arabesque'.

Stay tuned and patient!

Arabesque - in progress

I have been lax about this project. Life sometimes, if not often, gets in the way of some projects. Since this one is quite difficult, I need to be completely focussed. Understandably, the focus has been elsewhere, i.e. Christmas plans, projects, gifts, etc.

But, as promised, I am posting the little progress I have made since committing it to linen. Not that inspiring yet, but I am optimistic that once other colours start to appear on the fabric, the interest level will increase and the final 'feeling' will begin to make its appearance.

So be patient... my plan is to try to do a little over the holidays..... stay tuned.

'Believe' - Christmas Box

This cross stitch project was just the beginning of my idea to start the studio of L'Art de l'Aiguille. As often is the case, we embroiderers start a project with great zeal and enthusiasm and then life takes over and it is left in the UFO basket. Such was the case with this embroidery, but one quiet Christmas, it seemed appropriate to finish it completely.. here is the final piece and for the last decade has found its place under our Christmas tree.

So once again, I wish you happy holidays and enough quiet moments to go back into your basket of unfinished objects and make a stab at finishing at least one of them.