Dearest Needlework Community and Creative Hive Friends!
My blog this week is about Finishing: I am working harder at completing garments that I have begun, and at breaking through the stickiest points in their making – like when it all begins to feel impossibly clunky and ugly!
The fact of being stuck in the creative process is a human challenge as old as time; there will more often than not be at least one point in the making of any thing, that inhibits flow. And it is hard to keep one’s mind from waxing lyrical about what this means... what is so difficult about the correcting of the disharmonious, and how intensely it feels that we are never going to finish it/ nicely.
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I am extremely familiar with this dynamic, and with the neuroses that sit behind it – I’ve been practising them, breaking through them and even teaching about them, for decades! But there’s a whole new set of laws to learn, it seems, when one is on an upwards spiral in a (relatively) new discipline.
Or at least there are in my experience; there are new nuances picking away at my peace, and getting snagged and tangled in the threads which I’m endeavouring to sew into the fabrics. New doubts, because I haven’t come across this problem (or that mistake, or another feeling of impossibility around a skill I’ve not acquired) before.
But the more we might feel challenged, the more the satisfaction – the deep, deep fulfilment – can be, in our passing through the immense task and on to the finish line. I felt this week like I had climbed a great peak of a high mountain, and was observing from the highest: finishing a project that earlier in the year had felt like my enthusiasm was totally melting away, around…
The puffer-coat that got burned by the stove (my favourite winter cosy, gifted by a best friend back in Scotland), finally met its hybrid ‘other half’ in a fabulous mustard tweed-ish jacket donated by the family of a neighbour, who passed away last year. The two halves argued a little – and then fell into a love affair, which culminated eventually in this very solid marriage of two garments: the tweed-puffer collaboration.
It had seemed too hard to handsew (the machine would not participate) the bottom border – messily cut edges and fluffy duckdown flying around whilst I tried to close the bottom of it where I’d had to cut out a burned section… Taking a couple of months off and doing a load of other sewing projects – including some relatively banal repairs for friends), however, I came back to it with a different perspective. How this can change a challenging job!!
Increased confidence and skill makes the handsewing wholly easier, and reminds me that it is simply a matter of time and consistency – discipline – before it WILL ALWAYS, NO MATTER WHAT get easier to do any one thing.
Which makes finishing all the more straightforward: the more practise, the more smoothly the garment comes naturally to completion. I can’t even describe the process so much, as it channels through me by my doing it – not by my planning or thinking about it: it just (be)comes more harmonious/ly each time, or at least each big project.
Usually I don’t give up on a project; I am pretty determined and stoic: I keep on, even if things are getting more and more rigid and/ or chaotic. And this coat is a good example of that! Even if the final look is pretty clunky, it has a strong sense of identity and uniqueness to it, which I love. It makes me feel better about completing things in my own style – and them being imperfect and beautiful, just like we all are!
Finishing a piece of clothing without making it look forced/ contrived/ overworked – especially when one is still fairly early on in their mastery - is not obvious. The feeling of how it is going, doesn’t always correspond directly to the article’s actual unfolding. And vice versa. The puffer-tweed coat was a bit of both: it lifted me up and threw me down. And I it.
The final piece, which you see in this photoshoot that my dearest 
Anyways, I hope that you enjoy this post, and the photos we took: as I gain confidence, it gets to be more and more fun doing these posts and taking the photos – nevermind the joy of creating which brings me to this point!
I hope too that all of you are having a very beautiful creative week and life – sending you much love and happiness, fulfilment and peace!
