Dearest Beloved Needleworkers,

for the handing over of the coat, the belt and the collar had to be adapted

I had the most wonderful thing happen this week! I sold my first big item of sewing mastery! The very denim coat which I won our #needleworkyourjeans challenge with… And it is a particularly exciting event, as the way in which it is being given over to the new owner is incredibly special, intimate and co-creative…

My Year Of Mastery is melding into Year Two, and coming to completion of one cycle seems to bring a lot of completion to the fore; energetically, things make sense in terms of a circle closing and a new circle opening. My work feels like it has a certain concentration of focus and a certain fluidity of confidence – AND things seem just to be falling into place in a new and magical way… I had not one but FOUR interested visitors in my temporary clothing display area (of the guest bedroom!), and they ALL wanted some kind of garment! I sold a pair of trousers too, which I had transformed with a big wide strip of denim at the bottom of them – and reserved the denim coat. Plus the other two guests were very keen that I create something for them like the reserved coat!

The coat needed just a couple of adjustments: in particular belt which was for a way-larger waist originally, and the collar which didn’t sit as neatly as I wanted it to, due to the thick fabrics which have been sewn together by hand. We came up with an idea, co-creation-styling, and I set to making a kind of bias-binding finishing for the top of the collar, in a contrasting darker denim. It was quite straining on my fingers to use a big needle to dip into the length of the collar top, and get this new piece rightly attached! Fortunately, this was done over coffees and aperitivos, sitting in the bars over the weekend, chatting and enjoying the ambience! Hehe: Guardia Sanframondi in early summer this year is quite bustling (more than usual) and it is lovely to sit out #socialsewing !

I had myriad other small details that I worked on this week, and which I may update in another post; the theme of tiny-but-very-significant finishings is rolling along nicely. I realise that with the ending of the Year Of Mastery - and the beginning of Another! - there is a gorgeous good feeling of completion: an aspect of the creative cycle that I struggle with a LOT. Part of this comes from a want to keep the things that I make HAND MADE, raw, unique, natural, un-contrived and inimitable. This comes from my long career in fine Art. And the run-ins with institutions and snobby folks who would try and box me into over-finishing things with unnecessarily-refined details or framing. I hated this!! And pushed against it with my painting right to the end – even not-finishing-my-career-neatly, and just leaving it last year.

late evening sewing session on the collar, with hot tea and spumante!

So getting into the kinds of beautiful improvised details that my ‘fans’ love, is a different thing: each item requires a simple attention to finishing that is particular to that piece of clothing, no more, no less.

morning sewing session in the bar with un vino rosso - the collar is finished, and the zip even closes perfectly with it: hallelujah!

The finishing adds to the overall effect of the garment in a more substantial way than another detail might have done, during the creation process of undesigning the thing. The finishing especially when it is a collaboration, has the lovely quality of, e.g. wrapping a beautiful parcel in vintage fabric for a close friend, or filling the cracks of a broken pot with new gold seams: there is a divine symmetry of ending the work on a piece, with this concentrated flourish, which adds exponentially much more to its value and beauty – and makes the new owner very happy!

Here you can see how I constructed the collar border: like a kind of thick bias-binding to pull the clunky edges together

Once the jacket was complete, we went to Sergio’s (overly-flourishing!) garden and first did an interview about style and undesigning clothing – then Miriam modelled the coat for us both, as she is making a presentation for her end of year assessments as an art student in Brighton, England. We were so into the interview it got longer than anticipated, and the photos were a joy to take as the blue swirling skirt of the coat contrasted so beautifully with the greenery around…

I am deeply grateful for this exchange of much-more-than-payment-for-a-coat; the creative camaraderie that I’ve enjoyed this week has boosted my confidence immensely, as has the fact of having such a lot of new interest in my McMA clothing! It is a whole other dimension to move from working alone in my garret, as it were, to being in the dynamic conversation of folks really attracted by the collective body of what I’ve made in the past year – and Hive account@kesityu.fashion ‘s gorgeous pieces!! And within the context of them all going to new homes.