One of my favourite recent stitch in the dark pieces uses a stitch called Romanian Couching. I saw a piece worked in this stitch in a very inspirational book called Drawn to Stitch by Gwen Hedley. Hedley is looking at the link between drawing and stitching and how the one can be translated into the other.What I like about her process is exactly the ‘rough’ and irregular nature of the pieces she produces and the way she achieves this.

I have already used Romanian couching for a recent piece of work. Here is a detail of the stitching …which while varied and rhythmical is perhaps not what I would call really irregular.

Now here is the ‘stitch in dark’ version… quite a different beast altogether.

I really like how the stitches move and while they have, for the most part, the same structure, I think they are far more ‘lively’ than my other piece.

Now the trick remains to get this type of life into a full blown piece and not simply a sample on a shirt pocket.

In my work I am currently exploring the concept of irregularity, or at least loosening up my work. I remembered an exercise that I undertook in a workshop at Textile Fibre Forum in 2004. The work in the previous post was a recent example of that process.

This is the work that was jointly made by the class and presented by the class to our tutor.

Blind Stitching

This project was inspired by an 80 year old blind quilter. Although she
was blind she still led her Quilt Group, taught others to quilt and quilted
herself. ‘The physical act of stitching was encoded in her being after a
lifetime of quilting. The social interaction of women quilting together
was an integral part of her life.

In this project each participant was blindfolded and sewed eight lines of
stitches in response to eight different words: Gesture, Shape, Interval,
Texture, Mass, Organic, Intuition and Dialogue. These were sewn as if
they were lines of writing on a page and as stitching progressed the
personal marks of each individual emerged. When viewed as a whole the
marks read as a map of minds and hands finding their way.

Tutor: Dorothy Caldwell

Students: Leonie Andrews, Maz Beeston, Mary Crehan, June Fiford, Helen Grey,
Suzanne Gummow, Marita Hanigan, Alison Horridge, Jan Irvine-Nealie, Susan Jardin,
Adrienne Johns, Camille Lord, Kylie Rose McLean, Susan O’Connor, Sandy Soul, Carolyn Sullivan,
Belinda Von Mengersen, Fiona Wright