N e e d l e p r i n t

I stayed up late to finish my Paradise flower, it is so peaceful here working into the night, I can hear the deer outside and an occasional owl and beyond that nothing at all. Working the backgound was going to take time, so I relaxed into the stitching and let my thoughts wander a little.

Has anyone ever measured the brainwaves of stitchers when they are stitching? If not, why not? I don't know about you, maybe you can tell me, but sometimes I think I come close to the most meditative state I know while stitching.

So I was imagining the new Engagment Diary we are producing this year. Sometime ago I had the idea to make some needle workbooks - as opposed to needlework books. Basically these would be albums (with instructions) into which you could fasten completed works as you went along. For some reason the idea didn't really get off the ground - not all ideas make it into production. But it is interesting how some ideas just keep knocking on the door to get back in. I began to see our Engagement Diary as an Engaging Diary with images and patterns and places where you can fasten small worked pieces - perhaps once a month? Is that too much? What do you think?

The images for the Engaging Diary are coming from a very special collection which will start appearing in book form in 2010. The first volume is by Mary Brooks who authored English Embroideries. That will be about a third of the collection. Yes, you are absolutely right - this collection is HUGE. So it cannot be contained in one volume, and I doubt two, it looks like three. It is not just the quantity, but the quality that is breathtaking. And just next week I shall be melting as we start on the task of imaging the entire collection - thousands of images. It is not the best job - imaging a world class collection - it is incredibly hard and painstaking work and there is so much concentration on lighting and focus and all the other technical controls that one cannot really take everything in. However, the best job in the entire world follows on from all that hard work. That is the reviewing, the long detailed close-up studying from which so much becomes apparent. I am a privileged person and grateful too.

Mary has had a difficult year. The Textile Conservation Centre, in spite of many and prolonged protests, is to close in October this year. It hardly seems possible after all she and the centre have achieved. It is so much more difficult to turn back the tide once it has started to flood in. So much is under threat and it is never useful to wait until it comes down to the final staged battle. Better to get in the museum, the library, the corner bookstore, the local needlework store now and find out what you can do personally to sustain it.

In the museum in Arles, in the South of France, there were women stitching. Maybe it is something we can do, get together and ask our local museum if we can have stitching days there - and if we can, wouldn't it be a good idea if they put some of their sampler collection, languishing in store, out on display also? Why not have guild meetings in places where there are non stitchers roaming - the library, for instance? Linda Hadden had the great idea to take stitching to Heathrow Terminal 5! Imagine how many people would see stitchers - imagine how grateful they might be to while away two or three hours working a bit of stitchery....