I find looking at Pinterest is like thumbing through a few magazines, looking to see what’s the latest in something I’m interested in like architecture, or sculptures in the wild, stitchery, whatever. Pinterest sends me at least one but usually several emails a day, most of which I bin immediately – namely those beginning with “Your pin from textures was saved 4 times….” typical and frequent, or to take an actual example from my inbox today: “18 Newspaper basket pins you might like…” Good grief… newspaper baskets! Others, though, I just keep aside in the social section of my email where FB and LinkedIn messages also arrive. I’m not sure what is ‘social’ about Pinterest, but that’s where they are, and I look at them in a browsing session which often happens to be sunday morning.

I have boards titled with the broad topics I follow – presentations, lines and shapes, holes, textures, edge treatment, contemporary hand stitch, FME (free machine embroidery) sheers, using fragments’ or … , art to wear possibilities, interesting artists, drama in design. Although typically I don’t collect recipes in any format, paper or digital, I do have a board with one recipe in it- I must have been impressed enough to save it, which says something.

Pinterest also allows you to have two ‘secret’ boards not visible to anyone else looking at your pins. Just now I noticed one secret board I titled ‘aide memoire’ had just one puzzling image which I didn’t remember pinning –

so clicked on it to find this interesting little nail decorating website and vaguely remember posting it now, and why. I’m interested in embellishing with fine dots, so it is a reminder of a neat trick I might need sometime.

One of the biggest boards/collections I have on Pinterest is lines and shapes. of course, lines and shapes can be arranged infinite combinations. I could have ‘mark making’ too, but find all that goes just fine into ‘lines and shapes’.

Contemporary jewellery in a wide variety of media is a rich source for line/shape patterns, and comes in a wide variety of media available to all artisan craftsmen. Neck pieces, brooches and things that are almost garments offer plenty of presentation ideas for mixed media textile art – take the work of Helga Mogensen working in driftwood, fish skin and metals with fibre. Morgensen uses sturdy twine to fasten units together with knots and the freely dangling ends are a textural contrast, part of the overall design. Andrea Williams uses waterworn stones, precious metals and some natural fibres. Williams’ works look as if they’re somehow stitched or tied together, but these patterns of lines that look like stitches are in fact inlaid precious metals. Of course I have no intention of copying their works, but save/pin them merely because they are stimulating and inspiring, and sometimes suggest ideas for a new approach in my textile art.

All artists keep a file, plastic bag, shoebox or on online collection of inspiring images and ideas. This is the huge value of Pinterest.