time well stitched?

slow, quiet note no. 77

I’m very late to the laptop this evening.

homeward bound

I’ve been out and about and somewhat more than usual - two gigs, one cinema trip, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and a family gathering for a much-deserved Father’s Day lunch. In a week. There have been buses, trains, taxis and road trips. It has been fun with a capital F.

I have also, in between the entertainments, managed to fit in a fair bit of stitching and workshop planning.

You may have seen that I’ve been posting photographs and Notes about my new-found obsession and ever-growing collection of yo-yos (also known as Suffolk Puffs).

I have since discovered that evidence of this frugal technique of using up offcuts and re-purposing garments and domestic textiles has been found across the world and, in particular Brazil, where it is known as Fuxico (which I am delighted to have learned also means gossipy conversation…)

The yo-yoing crept up on me. It started when I was asked to demonstrate the making of one at a drop-in workshop a few weeks ago. I wracked my brain at the time, managed to make one by dredging the depths of my textile memory bank and didn’t think any more about it until I found this simple, yet genius, contraption in the bottom of a drawer.

Well, things got serious, very quickly. I used the disc as a template to cut out a pile of circles and now, and I don’t know quite how, there appear to be well over a hundred of the pretty little things.

I have been asked several times why I’m making them and, in truth, I have absolutely no idea. I have admired yo-yo quilts in exhibitions over the years and I have seen many examples of them being used to embellish garments but, pretty and decorative as they are, I just can’t see a bedspread of yo-yos in my future.

I estimate it takes approximately five minutes to stitch, gather and finish each yo-yo (not including cutting out the circles in batches). So, if I also estimate I’ve made about 120 over the last four weeks, that’s 600 minutes or ten hours of time. Ten hours.

Ten hours seems quite a lot of time to spend on something I have absolutely no plans for. Time which, of course, I could have been doing something else - some might say something more productive, something more useful. I could have baked several cakes, deep-cleaned the bathroom, batch-cooked a freezer full of dinners. I could have been writing or drawing. I could have read a novel (or two). Perhaps I could have exercised. Or perhaps not.

The more yo-yos I make, the more I realise that the repetitive, almost production line construction of these small, ruffled circles is sitting well with me at the moment. I’ve been referring to the process as a distraction but, in truth, I think it is more of a rest.

I have, for example, become more inclined to sit down with a cup of tea, needle, thread and fabric to whip up a quick yo-yo instead of reaching for my phone to tap, tap and scroll. This must be a good thing, especially, if the average adult seems to spending something in the region of seven and a half hours on their phones a day.

Also, doing something repetitive and simple offers an opportunity for thinking time. The yo-yo process is beyond simple, I can let my mind wander, think through other project ideas and make notes in between. Folding, stitching and gathering on repeat allows for productive pondering and, I find, gives more space for creative thinking than sitting down to a blank page or pristine fabric ever can.

I was planning to take my super portable yo-yos as car stitching for this weekend’s road trip to London. It’s about two and a half hours each way with enough motorway in between rural potholes and urban traffic lights to allow for comfortable bump-free hand sewing.

Instead, in-preparation for this week’s embroidery-focused workshops I thought I would use this trip as a time trial. I decided to see how long it would take me to draw and hand-stitch a small landscape.

One of my main aims in teaching is to encourage people to become more confident in drawing their own motifs and designs directly on to fabric rather than using pre-printed kits. This can, I know, be a challenge and a little bit daunting but I think that making an original drawing (even if it’s just a few lines) brings something unique and interesting to a piece of stitching.

I decided to keep the design small because I wanted to finish it within the journey time. I drew a simple landscape (four gently sloping lines plus a sketched outline as frame) - just a little larger than a credit card. I put pen to fabric as we got on the eastbound M4 yesterday and I put in the last stitch on the slip road coming off the motorway a few hours ago.

detail

In total, give or take, there are four hours in this small embroidered landscape and I’m interested to see what the reaction will be at tomorrow’s workshops. Does four hours to stitch such a small piece sound like a long time? It’s the equivalent of about forty eight yo-yos, give or take. Is either better or more worthwhile than the other?

Is it time well stitched I wonder?

for completeness, the back

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Have a great week.

Janice x