Many contemporary textile artists have turned to hand stitch which many people call ‘slow stitch’ – the title of an actual movement that has grown in popularity over the past decade, surrounded by a somewhat almost spiritual mystique. ‘Slow’ in this case means taking your time, being ‘mindful’, contemplating life (or your navel) while carefully considering how you place each stitch, as if somehow this makes the sewing or mending especially precious. Perhaps it does in a way, but I feel no need to literally stitch slowly; carefully executed stitches can be pretty speedy, too. And, my meditation takes the form of recorded books or podcasts to keep my mind occupied while I work through a project. (I’ve written earlier about this term, which I find a bit pretentious, and don’t use) Much more awesome to me is how the ancient needle and thread roots of modern fibre or textile art brought us to where ‘stitch’ in all its forms is rightfully celebrated as a medium of personal expression today.

Ancient peoples in different regions of the world began sewing skins together at different times, so it is hard to be definitive here, but the concept of humans ‘sewing’ as a means of joining skins goes back at least 20,000-40,000 years and probably longer. Many things humans do for practical reasons become refined and eventually also take on decorative roles in the long process of being handed down from generation to generation, and quite often the decorative role eventually outweighs the practical as the raison d’etre of the activity. Hence, at least from the time of the earliest Egyptians ~3000BC, we come to the notion of embroidery on a garment or household textile item decorated with additional stitched patterning. It’s a very human desire to decorate both every day objects and special items we use.

My strong hand stitch roots have led me to where it’s a dominant surface design element in my fibre art today, and none of that has anything to do with the current Slow Stitch meditation-fuelled fad of which I first wrote in 2010

In my 50s Australian childhood, embroidery was often referred to as ‘fancywork’. As a child, I certainly learned a lot from the competent knitters, sewists and embroiderers in the family, but back then girls at school were also taught the basics of sewing and embroidery. It still astonishes me to remember making a doll’s bed cover in grade 3, aged 8, featuring a hand stitched hem on the long sides, fringed ends, my initials embroidered in chain stitch, and a little iron-on transfer of the 3 bears, using straight, chain and stem stitches (sadly it disappeared decades ago) I wish my grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Clayton, was still with us to see how much I’ve done in my life from her patient teaching that year. Half way along one of the side hems she pointed out I was stitching from the wrong direction (left to right) and so made me unpick it and sew it from from right to left. I always think of her when I slip stitch a hem and really, whether its L-R or R-L depends on which way around you’re holding it, and you can do it either way – but I do it the way she made me then, and I love stitching a hem or binding … As a young homemaker beginning in 1969, I collected the weekly crafts magazine “Golden Hands” loaded with ideas and instructions for many kinds of embroidery, crochet, knitting, dressmaking, needlepoint, beading and more. In 1976 I signed on for a creative embroidery correspondence course through the Embroiderers’ Guild of New South Wales for a couple of years, which was great, because we were living in remote northern Australia at the time. Each month a lesson with instructions, fabrics and threads came in the mail, and after working it I sent it back for critique. I’ve only just now fully appreciated the importance of that course in my development as a fibreartist, including that I abandoned it a year early because I began deviating from the coloured threads provided, and substituting what I thought was better; the teacher’s pedantic comments became irritating, no matter how high she was in the pantheon of EGA NSW teacher experts. In 1978, while living in Mt. Isa, Far North Queensland, I went to a 10 day creative embroidery summer school in South Australia, where I learned the basics of free machine embroidery, soft sculpture, stitching on painted fabric, and the importance of designing stitched works around my own observations or experiences. That workshop is perhaps the most enduring influence on my work today. In 1987 I was invited to exhibit my creative embroidery by one of Australia’s then foremost creative embroiderers and teachers, the late Rusty Walkley. Shortly after that we moved to live for a while in the USA. Without a work visa, I set about studying traditional American geometric patchwork, just as the rotary cutter was revolutionising P&Q, and both piecing and quilting were increasingly being done by machine. In the very creative circles in which I found myself in Denver CO, my interest turned to non-traditional art quilt making, where ever since I’ve exercised the freedom to use every surface design and stitch technique I wish to.

The result is that my fibreart today draws on a variety of techniques, but it continues to be very low tech, as it always has been. A domestic sewing machine is the most sophisticated tool I currently use, although I was very tempted a few years ago to buy a laser cutter, but eventually didn’t.

Just after the pandemic broke out in early 2020, the TextileArtist.org began a new online educational venture called StitchClub. (further information here ) One great thing about SC is that many of the teachers encourage the use of repurposed fabrics and household waste items for their technique based workshops. However, I’ve stayed away from the ones that absoutely require specialised materials, chiefly because these days I try to use only what is already in my stash, not go out and buy more stuff! And, in planning and making my own work, I rarely need anything specific. From decades of remote living I’m accustomed to making do, adapting to using what’s around. The SC and many other good quality online workshops like FibreArts Take Two, and others set up independently by prominent teachers in the last few years, have given many stitchers/embroiderers a new or renewed absorbing interest in hand stitching in all its iterations – hand stitch, slow stitch, embroidery, fancywork or whatever else you call it.

Apart from the documented benefits of reducing tension and anxiety, another great thing about the rise in hand stitch’s popularity is that it encourages total novices to pick up a needle and thread and discover the pleasures and benefits of needleart using just the simplest stitches and the simplest equipment of all – their hands. Of course there’s a whole flock of people running courses, writing books and teaching classes on ‘slow stitch’, ‘meditative mending’ and ‘meaningful stitching’, and their projects and demos are usually based on recycling clothing and domestic textiles to give fabrics on which to stitch, but this also helps prevent or at least postpones those fabrics going into landfills. So, on the whole, ‘slow stitch’ scores very high in virtue signalling.… which takes us back again to the spiritual, cult-like atmosphere around it.