Sunday stitching notes, but it’s a Tuesday
watercolor-inspired circles-in-progress
Well, I worked through the weekend and planned to take this afternoon off, which of course means I’ve spent much of the afternoon dealing with tax stuff and medical admin. I’m chronically bad at honoring my own breaks. So I’ve come here to tell on myself and create a little accountability for the rest of the day. I have a last few Cybils Easy Reader & Early Chapter Book finalists waiting to be picked up at the library, so I think I’ll walk over there while Scott is in his Tuesday family Zoom meeting, and I’ll stop into the grocery store on the way home to get dinner fixings. I’m roasting a chicken tonight.
Since I was finishing up a Dart, I didn’t write a Sunday stitching update. I did take a picture for it, though! I’ve added a few more circles since then. What I’m aiming for is capturing the loose, blendy watercolor feeling of the painting exercise I posted last week. The circles are meant to be irregular, with their colors bleeding into the adjacent rows. At first (the circles on the left, which is the bottom of the design) I was using a Frixion pen to draw circles as guidelines, but I quickly abandoned that plan. You can see from the marks inside some of the stitched rings that I didn’t even keep to the guidelines where I drew them. Now I’m just winging it.
I love using the heat-erasable Frixion pens for embroidery designs. A quick hit with an iron or blow dryer will zap those marks away.
I’m enjoying the looseness of this project, the way I can make a couple of extra-long stitches at the top or side of a circle to have its colors bleed into a new one. It’s also fun to be so deliberately imprecise—since most of my embroidery is quite the opposite.
It’s a meditative process and I’ve been stitching a few circles each morning, not even listening to anything for once. Just thinking, or not thinking.
I’ve needed those pockets of quiet because life has been rather full this month! Full in some fabulous ways, and some frustrating ones. I’ll be able to share more about the fabulous bits soon.
I do think it’s funny I decided to stitch these slow circles on fabric intended for a crossbody bag. It’ll be ages before I’m ready to get on with the bag assembly so that I can actually use it. But no rush.
Ha, the weather app has just informed me there’s a 50% chance my library books and I will get rained on. Guess I’d better scoot out the door!
Mary Lee Hahn says:
I’m enjoying ALL of your blog posts, but this one really resonates. I love all kinds of process posts. The overlap of watercolor and embroidery is rich with possibilities. I also love “winging it” and “scratchpad hoop.” Thanks for the nudges and inspirations!
On January 18, 2023 at 7:56 am
Melissa Wiley says:
Mary Lee, thanks for these kind words. My idea of the scratchpad hoop came in a flash of understanding one day that I needed a place to try things out and make mistakes freely without worrying about ‘wasting’ materials. I mean, I’ve never felt like rough drafts were a waste when writing, right? It’s part of the process. So I gave myself permission to try stitching designs or techniques and scrap them if they flopped—knowing I learned something from the process. I don’t know exactly why I needed to consciously give myself that permission, except I guess that fabric and floss seem less expendible, somehow, than paper.
On January 31, 2023 at 5:43 pm
Amy says:
Hope you and your books made it home without incident! Lovely stitching so far – I love the blendy look.
On January 18, 2023 at 11:53 am