The Colour Collaborative: September

Stitched

I was a little bit surprised, given how many times I've typed the words 'stitch' in my blogging life, to find that the stitches I think of when I hear the word aren't crochet stitches, or even knit stitches. Before either of those, my first thought is of sewn stitches.
The needle and thread, the act of fabric being pierced by a sharp point and the thread drawn through behind it. For some reason, that's just 'stitched' more than any other type of stitch is stitched. How strange that I should feel that to be true. I use crochet stitches almost every day and knitted fabric is made up of hundreds of stitches. Then there's the 'cramp in your side' kind and the 'fixing wounds' kind, not to mention the 'stitched up' kind and more besides. But even so, nothing says stitched to me better than that picture up there.

When I sew I like to see the stitches in the fabric. The lines of ditches they create in quilts, the soft wrinkled pucker of the fabric as the stitch pulls it into place. Simple stitches are enough for me, just running lines, in and out, straight and orderly, following outlines or spelling words. They don't need to be complicated to be beautiful.
It's true to say that I love the conformity of machine stitches, those nice, even, orderly lines, so regular, and on a good sewing day, so straight. They appeal to the control freak side of my nature but despite that, you really can't beat the feel and rhythm of handmade stitches. So individual, so personal, each one carefully placed, each one linked to the last and a tiny part of the whole. Yes handmade stitches do win over their regimented brothers I think.
Maybe that's why I like them to show up against the fabric and maybe that's why I find the back of patchwork nearly as pretty as the front. Or maybe it's just because I want everyone to see how much time it took, how many stitches I made, how hard I worked.
Or maybe it's just because stitches make me happy.

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Don't forget to check out the other great 'Colour Collaborative' blogs for more of today's great posts...
Annie at Annie Cholewa Gillian at Tales From a Happy House Jennifer at Thistlebear Claire at Above the River

What is The Colour Collaborative? All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.
S x

♥

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