Winter Stitching

Marshland drawing and stitch on linen sheet. Winter 2025.

I stitch my way through the Winter, every Winter, I think I always have. It’s not something I plan to do and I don’t share or sell these creations, they are a very personal, very fulfilling, making practice. Turning to stitch is a creative urge that starts to call around October and then lasts usually until March. Cosy Winter evenings in the living room, half watching the tv, fully concentrating on the latest project. Stitching calms my mind and keeps my hands busy, it also feels like a guilty pleasure as I create everything from drawn artworks and clothes on the sewing maching to hand stitched small felt creatures with beautifully made tailored clothes!

My lifetime of stitching probably started in the early 1980s. I remember clearly hand stitch projects I made at school – a Kandinsky inspired felt picture, a very intricate Escher inspired neverending spiral loop with stitch and Brusho colours, making tiny historical reproduction clothes for a project on Romeo and Juliet during A Levels, patchwork blankets using offcuts of fabric, dresses, trousers and extremely short skirts! I taught myself to use my mum’s Frister & Rossmann when I was 15 and somehow I took it on the train to Cornwall when I went to study at Falmouth Art School in the 1990s. I stitched my way through college making the most fabulous clothes, I remember being especially pleased with a shiny gold skirt made from a curtain I found in a charity shop in Falmouth which I used to go raving in! These were the times of no phones and very few photos so there is no record of the treasures I created which have slowly disappeared over the years. The need to stitch has continued regardless.

My current projects are making me very happy so I thought it would be good to share them at a time when it feels like creativity is a lifeline. Our communities at home and across the world are lurching from one challenge to the next, so much is out of our control, it can feel overwhelming and that is exactly the time when creativity and stitch can keep us tethered.

‘The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair’ Louise Bourgeois

Stitched lavender hearts 2016 – I made a lot of these for Christmas presents!

Below – During the pandemic I treated myself to a super new sewing machine – SINGER heavy duty 🙂

I started making hand embroidered treats for friends a few years ago – below – moth for the lovely Andy Jarrett, a great lover of moths.

Below – medieval hare playing a recorder type instrument for my sister Laura.

In January 2024 I decided to sew along with incredible maker Ann Wood and her 100 days of stitch. For the next 2 years I have been adding to this project of stitching 20 A5 fabric ‘pages’ It took a bit longer than 100 days and I ended up framing each one rather than turning them into a fabric book. The process of designing and stitching these creatures has been very satisfying.

100 days of stitch – 20 A5 ‘pages’ of handstitched creatures on vintage french linen sheet.

100 days of stitch – French Knot Fox. Medieval Hare. Pigeon. Badger. Moon Gazing Hare.

100 days of stitch – works in progress.

Current project – I have just finished making Reynard Fox, I made his cravat and am working on a very fine, tailored tweed coat lined with Liberty fabric. Totally absorbed in making this Winter. Take care and keep creative. love Sarah.