Slow Stitching
All images: Claire Wellesley-Smith. Photographer: Carolyn Mendelsohn
We are pleased to be able to add studio workshops to our programme and to start planning to meet face to face again. We have a new workshop for November, Slow Stitching with Claire Wellesley-Smith at The Artworkers' Guild in London. This hand-stitch course explores ideas around textile as a daily practice. Wellesley-Smith has been working on a daily stitch journal for eight years: at the start of her project she described it as having, 'No rules, no projected outcome. A record of days, but not a daily record.' She will be bringing this work to show and to share the story. Participants will begin to develop ideas for their own daily stitching practice using simple repetitive hand stitching.
Lydia Caston profiled Wellesley-Smith in Issue 93: Rethink: “In response to a rapid textile production industry and changing consumer habits, Wellesley-Smith reverts to a slower and more meditative medium. Her firm belief in the healing powers of textile practices has been the common thread in her workshops. In 2006, she hosted ‘A Healing Environment’ project in East Yorkshire, where she enhanced in-patient psychiatric facilities by creating emotionally engaging, vividly coloured wallhangings. Her projects highlight the therapeutic significance of the making process. Her philosophy is to integrate calmness and contemplation into our textile creations. Wellesley-Smith assembled these ideas in her 2015 book, Slow Stitch: Mindful and Contemplative Textile Art. She applies a learning-through-doing philosophy and encourages her readers to take a more considered and leisurely approach to their creative process.”
“Stitching in particular synthesises many of Wellesley-Smith’s thoughts about materiality and mental health. The repetitive rhythm of hand-stitching, producing single moments one after the other, offers a source of therapy. It is an immediate means to enter the world of the momentary and the mindful; it requires little material and can be picked up at any moment of the day. It is a daily distraction that Wellesley-Smith indulges in each morning. She even keeps a special stitch diary and encourages her readers to start their own.”
Find out more and book your place via our Workshops.