A stitch in time…Claire Wellesley-Smith records a life in needlecraftOnce a day, I pick up a length of recycled linen cloth and sit and hand stitch for a few minutes, usually at my kitchen table. I have been doing this most days for six years. The fabric has a pleasing weight, it feels comfortable and familiar in my hands. As my needle pierces the cloth and I begin to make simple, repetitive stitches, a sense of focus and purpose emerges. I find that my most productive thinking time is accompanied by needle, thread and cloth.

My working life is based in textiles. For the past 15 years I have worked across the North of England, writing and delivering long-term community engagement projects that explore wellbeing, heritage and health using the rich history of textile production in the region as a starting point. These projects have developed community textile gardens that grow dye plants and create local colour palettes; investigated the hidden lives of textile workers and communities; and explored stories of industrial production and then rapid deindustrialisation in the wool and cotton towns of West Yorkshire and east Lancashire. The work is busy, working in multiple locations: community centres, church halls, schools, hospitals, museums and galleries and often with multiple languages translated during sessions. I drive from venue to venue with a car full of textile equipment, scraps of fabric, a toolbox full of scissors and threads. Alongside this activity is the less seen work that goes into engagement projects: researching and writing bids, monitoring, evaluating, meetings and all the other administrative juggle. During a particularly hectic period of my working life, I discovered a direct correlation between problem solving and the time I spent stitching. My daily practice – a stitch journal, developed at this time, a process-led project that allowed me a different sort of head space. Writing about it in 2013 I described, ‘No rules, no projected outcome. A record of days, but not a daily record.’ My stitches are simple, mostly variations of running stitch, worked in blocks, sometimes in circles, edges and colours often overlapping. The work grows slowly and fabric is added when it is needed. Occasionally a patterned or coloured fragment of cloth with some significance to me is appliqued at the edges. At a community indigo-dyeing workshop I once dipped an edge of the journal, a gentle blue soaking through and overdyeing already made stitches. I use a mixture of threads in different weights, silk, cotton, bamboo, linen, often layering new stitches over existing ones. 
The repetitive nature of the work has improved my mastery of stitch technique and allows me to pick up the rhythms of my stitches quickly. My favourite threads are the ones I dye myself using the dye plants I grow at my allotment or at community textile gardens. This for me is another way of making a personal, place-based connection to the cloth. It has become a starting point for more resolved pieces of work: the stitches rooted in the locality where they were made. 'During a particularly hectic period of my life, I discovered a direct correlation between problem solving and the time I spent stitching'Recently larger sections have been stitched using a vibrant reddish/orange thread dyed with madder (Rubia tinctorum) plants produced in a dye garden in east Lancashire. This is a direct reference to the Turkey red dyeing and printing industry prominent in that area during the 19th century, an industry that the local community there is researching as part of an artist’s residency. While stitching with this thread I use my time to think about the progression of that residency, the multiple voices involved in that project and how they can be heard. Closer to home, my stitches are sometimes inspired by a snapshot of the season. A section of small grey, blue and white shaded circles records the colour of the sky observed from my kitchen window every day during the summer of 2015. Elsewhere in the journal are tally marks of days and my own stories of work, of family, of love, and loss, in a stitched code that only I can interpret. The cloth as a whole piece is now over three metres long, no longer the portable project it was when I began.

Many artists use a journal or sketchbook as part of a daily art practice. They can be used for recording images, textures or words, or as a tool for developing artistic work. Others use ‘Daily Pages’ – an idea explained in The Artists Way by Julia Cameron, which suggests writing three sides of A4 longhand everyday as the first thing you do when you wake:anything that is on your mind, from tiny worries to big plans. It is described as a method that can help calm anxiety, help resolve dilemmas, and produce insight that can lead to new work. When teaching about textiles as a daily practice using my stitch journal I often ask participants to describe something they do every day without fail. A daily walk, a craft activity, writing a diary or a journal, a well-timed solitary cup of coffee, mindfulness, prayer or meditation have all been described. This ‘dailyness’ is often explained to me as a reflective space, where one can be absorbed in the moment. Studies have also shown that repetitive movement can enhance the release of serotonin. This is a hormone that calms, is an analgesic, but can also raise mood. The rhythmic nature of hand-stitching can lead to a meditative like state. Psychologist Mihály zikszentmihályi uses the concept of ‘flow’, to describe absorption in an activity where one loses sense of time and place. This too can be very therapeutic and restorative.
More recently I have begun a doctoral research project with the Open University. My research is about engagement with textile heritage and asks whether involvement in slow textile projects can craft resilience in post-industrial former textile communities. Alongside this project I have begun a new section of my stitch journal and I am using it as a creative method to chart my research and allow myself a different way of thinking about it. I find that these wandering stitches are helping to embed my thinking as I work, a way of thinking-through making (Jerome Ravetz, 2011; Timothy Ingold, 2013). I am planning to continue to chart the course of my studies this way, using my stitch journal as an open-ended investigation. As I continue to use this journal, I recognise less obvious outcomes. Even on my busiest days, I find a window of time, even if it is only a few minutes, to pick up the cloth and continue.