Answers Held In The Fibres

What Needlework Can Do For Us

In October I’ll be moving to Oxford to start my Fine Art degree at The Ruskin School of Art. I wanted to talk a little about the practices that I’ve been giving time to over the summer, ahead of starting my degree. While these aren’t ways of working that I anticipate directly using lots within my degree, I feel like their essence holds an important clue, and I don’t yet know how aspects of them may or may not play into my work.

To begin with, knitting, crocheting and sewing have been mindful activities for me, that I’ve kept up because of the way they make me feel whilst I’m working on them. I talked in Over and Over and Over about the similarities between making textiles and our own bodies. I find the repetitive motions very calming; they’re predictable and don’t require too much thought, so I can enjoy the tactility of the needles moving together. The cyclical processes of forming stitches aligning with the physiology of our bodies.