Eline Gaudé-Hanses, embroidery sample, cotton embroidery floss on cotton, 2021
“Embroidery has long suffered from a lack of artistic credibility due to the stereotypical notion that diligence takes precedence over artistic creativity within the sewing process. Art historian and author Rozsika Parker (1984) tells us: “That embroiderers do transform materials to produce sense – whole ranges of meaning – is invariably entirely overlooked. Instead, embroidery and a stereotype of femininity have be-come collapsed into one another, characterized as mindless [and] devoid of significant content” (p. 6). But judging from my own experience, embroidery requires one to make conscious, cognitive decisions, specifically, when it comes to the choice of subject, design, color palette, and even through the selection of stitches. With moss, grasping the very physical presence of the plant proved to be a challenge of its own.
My practice has always been very intuitive: it involves a little preparatory work – a quick sketch to better grasp the proportions and features of my subject – and requires no prior transfer of pattern onto the canvas. What it does involve is a great deal of observation. Patience, and therefore time, becomes an essential component of this process, as it is intricately tied to the act of observation and the careful hours spent examining a tuft of moss. Discoveries are made in such moments: your eye gets caught up in an infinitely small detail, registering the leap of an unexpected critter, hidden in the moss’s tightly woven foliage.
Getting to know someone, or something requires patience, it takes time. Embroidery offers such time in abundance. As a pattern starts unfolding on my embroidery hoop, I notice the parallel trajectory between my working pace and moss’s own timeline. Due to my lack of training and to the nature of the craft itself, progression on my embroidery piece is slow to appear, but it reveals an underlying similarity with moss’s growth rate. A single embroidery project can take months to be completed – depending on the complexity of the chosen motif. Similarly, moss develops slowly, and while some species require only a few weeks to establish themselves, others can take up to two years to flourish (Kimmerer, 2003). The speed at which we do something will inevitably affect our experience of it: by engaging with slow-paced practices such as embroidery, and slow stitching (which promotes a slower, mindful approach to stitching cloth), I can disengage from my own, narrow perception of time, and directly experience moss’s own temporality. Embroidery thus becomes an embodied practice, one that focuses on the body as a tool to develop awareness, stay present, and feel connected.
While adapting to a slower, more deliberate working pace allows us to become more familiar with our chosen materials, it also encourages us to pay more attention to details. As textile artist Claire Wellesley-Smith (2015) notes: “by slowing down my own textile practice, I have developed a deeper emotional commitment to it, to the themes that I am exploring, and to the processes I use” (p. 4). A slow approach can therefore be understood as a celebration of process. I have always enjoyed getting lost in intricate patterns, something I felt could easily be achieved through drawing. This became a key concern when I began thinking about representing moss using a textile medium: how could I retain the intricate nature of my drawings using only thread? As Beatrice Grisol, Head Weaver at Paris’ venerable Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins, remarked, weavers must possess a love of drawing and an abundance of imagination to translate an artist’s vision using silken or woolen threads (The J.Paul Getty Museum, 2017). A statement which, I believe, also applies to embroiderers.
While researching stitches I came upon the split stitch; early documentation of its use dates to Medieval England (West, 2018), and its versatility of use (for outlining and filling in colors for patterns) made it a popular choice for embroiderers over time. When I began using this stitch, I quickly noticed the likeness it shared with drawing, for the split stitch can be worked into tight curves and used to create minute details, similarly, to hand-drawn lines. It allowed me to transpose my love of the line onto fabric, making for a great richness of details and satisfying a need for texture which had been sorely lacking in my drawings.
While the split stitch allowed me to obtain finer details, I also noticed something interesting occurring on the backside of my canvas: a slightly distorted mirror image of the moss was revealing itself underneath my artfully arranged stitches. This reversed image acted as a testimony of my tentative approach to embroidery, but it also showed me a hidden network of connections: where one stitch ended the next began, and I could easily follow the progression of my needle through the fabric. The emerging pattern echoed the invisible networks of the forest itself: roots and mycelium growing and intertwining beneath the ground, forming a mutually beneficial collaboration. Suddenly, embroidering the likeness of moss had become a metaphor for hidden networks of care.”
Gaudé, E. (2022). Yearning for Kinship: An Artistic Exploration of Moss and Embroidery. Research in Arts and Education, 2022(1), 13–22. https://doi.org/10.54916/rae.116992
References:
Kimmerer, R. W. (2003). Gathering moss: A natural and cultural history of mosses. Oregon State University Press.
Parker, R. (2019). The subversive stitch: Embroidery and the making of the feminine. Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
The J. Paul Getty Museum. (2017, May 9). The art of making a tapestry [Video]. In Smarthistory. https://smarthistory.org/making-a-tapestry/
Wellesley-Smith, C. (2015). Slow stitch: Mindful and contemplative textile art. Batsford.
West, D. H. (2018, September 19). A stitch in time: Split stitch. In PieceWork. https://pieceworkmagazine.com/a-stitch-in-time-split-stitch/
