Richard McVetis led this week’s stitch challenge over at TextileArtist.org. The concept is easy: couching stitches. I didn’t have a lot of time this week for this project so I didn’t stress myself much over trying to make something super cool. Instead, I did what he suggests which is to simply enjoy the act of stitching. I did explore couching in depth before with my TAST banner, which you can see here.

Using another old scrap of stained fabric (early on I made the mistake of using my iron-rich tap water in my iron…), I found a feline line drawing online, traced around a star-shaped pad of post-its, and made two rectangles to anchor it all together (though I ran out of space in my hoop, hence the odd shape of the bottom one).

My biggest takeaway from this week’s lesson was Richard’s idea that stitching is “mark making”. He sees it as the stitches being a physical representation of time spent engaged with a project. I know, of course, the time involved in sewing; it is why I understand the “high cost” of handcrafted items – handwork take time! But I never looked at it as being a record of life ticking away. A physical statement that says: “hey, I was here” – and one that lives long past the stitcher’s lifetime. It is really neat to think about it in that way.