Slow Stitch - An Introduction

hello lovely people I'm k3n and welcome to my Channel today I want to talk about slow Stitch which is an very important part of my creative practice um to me slow Stitch is much more than just the act of hand stitching it very much focuses you on the creative process of making rather than on the the end product of what it is you're actually producing um so it's it's all about mindfulness it's about engaging with the materials um feeling how the needle goes through the cloth how threads relate to the cloth and so on and I'll talk about that in more detail as I go along um another important aspect is that you value the materials that you use so I very rarely buy anything brand new my materials come either from discarded household items of my own or friends and family things that are no longer useful um as to their original purpose or I will buy secondhand from flea markets and charity shops and things like that um there's two aspects to that one is obviously the the sustainability aspect of it and the other is that old cloth already has a history you know it's lived a life it's been through processes it's been laundered it's been used and loved um so it there's there's something very it's very difficult to put into words you can hear that there's something within the cloth that kind of speaks to you in a way that a brand new piece of cloth that's that's been produced you know and nobody's ever done anything with it doesn't so that's that's um to me a very important aspect of my my process um another aspect to it I keep saying aspect I can't think of another word another another thing another thing to it is that I draw very much on inspiration from cultural textile Traditions from from all kinds of cultures so from traditional Patchwork quilting you know piecing from from my own English and and the American history of pator and quilting but also things like Japanese borrow um Indian canther things like that um and the the final thing is in terms of the cloths that I use a lot of them are if they're household Linens For example they're white or off-white so in order to put color and interest into them rather than using synthetic dyes I like to ecoprint as I've done on this little pouch and also on this book wrap here um or naturally dye with things from my garden or from The Woodlands uh this little strip here of lace and the wool as well for example can you see that this was actually dyed with dead budler flowers believe it or not it's true Dead budler Flowers give you gold it's a bit like Rumple stilt skin spinning Straw from gold anyway um so that's slow Stitch sorry I've got a bit of a frog in my throat and an escaping needle I'll put that back in there um so as I said at the beginning uh I'm planning a a project throughout 2024 which I'd love it if some of you would would join in with me so every week I will show a way of assembling some little pieces of cloth together into a little piece like you know so big or thereabouts and uh ways of stitching into that piece of cloth in a mindful way in the essence of slow Stitch and so that will be a weekly so at the end of the year you'll have 52 little pieces which at the end of the year then we can put together into something you could make them into a scroll or you could join them all into a larger piece to make a wall hanging um or what I like to do is make Stitch journals make books which I then include my slow Stitch pieces into so we're now in early November 2023 so for the end of towards the end of the year for the last few weeks I thought I'll every week show a little tutorial in how to make some of the different bits and Bobs that I use when I'm practicing my slow Stitch and ways of housing the the slow Stitch pieces that I make so um I will do a video tutorial imminently this is one I'm preparing as we speak well not as we speak obviously I can't do two things at once um but you know um as as to how to make a sewing pouch so these are two of my sewing pouches so you can choose what size and shape you want them to be yourself but I'll show you the basic construction um this one's quite Square because I just went with like I said the piece of fabric that I had uh and that's just a simple pouch with a a twiney tie and this little one I've had for a long long time it's been all over the place with me it's the one I take if I go traveling it was mostly made from old denim you see there there's a bit of a a button hole that's coming off but I just love that sorry distract it um and in that's got all kinds of an old credit card I don't know why I put that in there thought it might be useful for something um and some stuff so I I'll show you how to make a little pouch which you can use as a sewing pouch or you know whatever you want to use it for the second thing I'll be showing is one how to make one of these little bags and this is a design based on a Japanese rice bag or K bakuro I believe that's how you pronounce it which is was traditionally used for taking Gifts of rice to the temple but they're lovely they're so um useful I've got several of them you know I keep knitting in them I keep little ongoing projects not entirely sure what I've got in this shall we have a look oh yes now I remember yes this has got my little Stitch meditation Scrolls in um I will at one point do a video about those look at those loveliness is anyway back to the bag um so I'll be showing doing a video showing how to make these little bags with the drawring to keep them closed and then the third thing that's right isn't it 1 2 3 yes third thing is this little beast now this is called a beast coru which is a French word which just means something that's a weird or a strange shape um and this one is obviously a pin cushion it's got pins in it uh you can also put needles in it then I guess it would be a needle cushion um and in addition to this the the issue is when you make a pin cushion just with soft with a soft filling the if you put long pins in it like this one they're inclined to poke right through do you see that that see that pokey pokey and then they bite you and that's not nice so what I came up with I haven't made one for this yet what I came up with for this excuse me for this little ping cushion which is a vintage one that I bought somewhere um which had the same issue I made a little saucer now this is made out of fabric twine or cloth twine there's another video on my Channel showing how to make the twine but anyway so as part of the pin cushion tutorial I'll show you how to make a little saucer for your pin cushion uh some people put them in teacups or little tins you could do that as well and then however hard I poke that needle do you see it's quite sturdy it won't it's not biting you so that'll be the third thing 1 two 3 yep and then the fourth thing which will probably be a few weeks of tutorials because there's a few different kinds um I'll show different ways to make a journal for your slow Stitch pieces I'll just move those over there out the way so if I start with this one this is the oldest one that I have here I think this is from 2017 this is a journal made with a cloth wrap or a cloth cover and uh so it's one great big long strip which is made from several bits of cloth all stitched together and then with lots of different stitching done on it and then on the end I've got some Dingle dangles bits of broken earring and whatever and then inside I just turn it the right way up inside I Stitch some signatures which is the book making term for the little booklets within a book of cardi paper and you don't have to use cardi paper you could use you know a sturdy Sketchbook or a watercolor paper and then onto that so that book was made and then onto those pages I think this one went for 100 days each day I stitched a little piece separately and then when it was done I just stitched it to the page you see that there's just a little line of stitching down there and in this one as well I wrote some little words just about what was going on that day in my life it's a bit cryptic but when I look back now I just read the few words and I know I remember straight away what was happening that day there's an actual Leaf stitched onto there um so that's that style of Stitch journal and this also gives you an idea of you know maybe some of the little pieces we'll be doing each week uh next year 2024 made a little house that's some onion skin dyed silk so that's that style with the cloth cover um a second style this is one I've just finished the one with the dead budler flower gold on it it's got a little wrap which is actually separate to the book apologies for my throat and it's actually made I was lucky enough to pick up some really old books that were falling to pieces now I do I trained as a librarian I do have a bit of an issue with cutting up old books but um how I justify it to myself anyway is that there are so many old books in the world and so many of them end up in landfill that it's surely better to take them and use them and and turn them into something useful and hopefully beautiful as well um and the corners actually are repurposed off a bag that I picked up uh somewhere because the corners were really bad so inside this one what I've done is I've made little signatures of cloth instead of paper and they're just tied in so there's three in here in total if I remember correctly you see so that just lifts out and I've actually stitched them together just on the fold but this is much easier than if you wanted to stitch something onto this page rather than wrestling with a great big book like this especially when you're you know you've got a lot in it already you've just got this one little piece and you can stitch onto here and the rest of it doesn't really get in your way that's the idea like I said I haven't actually started using it yet but I'll show you how to make one of those um let's just do that quickly there we go and then a little wrap to go around it just to keep it closed safe oops they're getting tangled together and this Third Kind actually I'll show you that last I'll show you this one next this one here which is the uh Japanese borrow inspired one it's all bits of old Denim and scrap seone on it has got the same kind of principle in the middle which is this cloth book there we go go which is tied around with this bit of repurposed stuff trim so then there's a little book within a book again it's sewn together down the fold but then you can take that out and then you can stitch your little pieces onto the pages quite easily with the rest of it not really getting in your way and then when you've done oh dear there we go when you've done you can just tie it back into its cover and there it's safe and sound and the slight difference with this one is then instead of having several cloth signatures I've just got that one that's quite a chunky one and I've left lots of room here and here in the hope that we can avoid this a little bit although I quite like this fatness um but either side of it I've done done I've done I've put a paper signature and that's actually permanently attached you know so in there you could also do Stitch pieces or you could write or you could stick things or you could paint or sketch you know if that was something that you did so there's one of those either side of the cloth so I'll show you how to make this this kind and as a little addition to this one it's got in the back cover behind this belly band which came from some old trousers of my husband's uh it was the tie around his belly and now it's a belly band sorry that amuses me perhaps more than it should um I made these little snippet packs so it's folded piece of paper and just some little scraps of cloth within it that you can then cut out out or tear out and then you can use those within your projects in in the book um this also prompts me to say when I'm working what I often do because I've got many many many scraps that I've picked up over the years instead of working from my whole scrap collection at once I'll put a few scraps into a little basket or a little bowl and I'll take those with me and go and sit wherever I'm going to sit to to do my stitching and I find that by limiting my choices in that way my creativity is much um it's given much more free reain it seems to me that if I have a huge array of things to choose from it kind of stifles you um that's just an aside that's another aspect of slow Stitch actually uh as far as I as far as I look at it so that's the third kind of stitch Journal and The Fourth Kind is this one uh this is again an old book now there's actually a proper flip through of this in the playlist of Journal flips if you did want to go and have a look at it I can I ask you to turn your volume up as loud as it will go I made it before I have my new microphone hopefully now you can hear me loud and clear um so the sound's very quiet but if you turn the volume up to full hopefully you should hear me if you want to um so that's got a little wrap as well and again it was an old book it's got a hard cover which was really really fragile I had to put these cloth pieces around um and it's a little bit different because within the pages and their paper Pages mainly I've already embellished some of them with bits of lace that's an old button card things like that um and so and also within this I've made little belly bands little pockets uh I do believe that's called a flip bot here um to house my slow Stitch pieces in a slightly different way and this is the first piece that's gone into it uh as an example of what I was talking about cloth with a history this again was another old sheet that's completely worn it was so fragile you only had to look at it and it tore you couldn't even have used it for dusters uh so I dipped it in my Indigo vat and um stitched it together with this other little piece of fabric that was quite fragile which is is some vintage Japanese uh kimono cotton I believe that was given to me by a very good friend of mine so those two little fragile old bits of cloth are now sort of holding each other holding each other up supporting each other and they live in there so that that's the four different journals um so there we go so just to recap uh starting January 2024 each week I'll show you how to make a little like for example a little cloth piece so a way of putting cloth together to make an interesting Ser I call them back cloths you make a little assemblage of cloth onto which you can then do your decorative stitching um so that'll be weekly and for the rest of this year I'll be showing you how to make um a stitch Journal well a few different kinds so you can choose which one you like best uh a pouch which you could use for your your needles and threads and so on um a little rice bag style with a drawring you could keep your cloth scraps in there or your project pieces while you're working on them and finally and not forgetting the little bis coru which is a word I love saying and a little saucer made of fabric twine so you'll learn how to join the the fabric twine into a flat surface um to make a structure to put the the pin cushion in so all that being said I would love it if you would like to follow along with me um in the the weekly project next year if you could hashtag if you're on Instagram or Facebook hasht slow Stitch with k3n I'll pop that down in the description as well and then I'll be able to see all your lovely Creations so there we go that's slow Stitch that's um an introductory video to some of the things that I I plan uh hope that was enjoyable and informative and I look forward to seeing you next time for more cloth Tails thank you bye-bye

Channel: k3n clothtales

Views: 66,451

Keywords: #YouCut

Id: Ihhpoju8Yrs

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2023