On a Pinterest embroidery group, an anonymous wise person explained why slow stitching calms me. ‘It’s the rhythm of the needle drawing the thread through the fibres of the fabric that brings one to calmness. It’s like music for the soul.’
If I had to guess, the musical version of slow embroidery would sound something like Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies. Soothing and serene, a slow tempo. A meditative melody perfectly in tune with back stitch, split stitch, satin stitch, the French knot, chain stitch and featherstitch.
A British group, Stitching Together (stitchingtogether.net), which brings together researchers, project commissioners, textile artists and enthusiasts to foster dialogue around the advantages of ‘participatory textile making’ – doing needlework together by hand – shared a strong message with the world in 2020. They employed embroidery as a healing therapy in a study, ‘Peace’, in Latin America.
One of the study participants, named Edwin, was a former child soldier in the now-demo-bilised bloodthirsty Colombian guerilla group FARC-EC. He could embroider whatever he wished on a piece of fabric. ‘I am a person. I also have love in my heart,’ was his message. Next to it, he embroidered a biological sketch of a human heart. (Over two decades, FARC is believed to have forced more than 18 000 children to take part in Colombia’s bloody internal conflict.)