Now that my 2019 stitch journal has ended, it seems like a good time to look back at the year and review the project. In coming weeks, I'll post about each of the 18 pieces, which I began in January and completed in December.
Bonnie Sennott, Daily Thread: Piece No. 1 (Earth), 2019, pearl cotton and linen, 6 inches x 6 inches
A bit of background may be helpful for anyone who's new to my abstract embroidery work or to daily stitch journals. In 2016, I created my first yearlong daily stitch journal, A Year in Thread, which was rooted in the natural world and seasons of western Massachusetts. I was inspired by the thoughtful work of textile artist Claire Wellesley Smith, who, in her book Slow Stitch, describes her stitch journal practice as “a mixture of seasonal observation and thinking space.”
From January 1 through December 31, 2016, I stitched each day on linen with a color observed in nature in my backyard. I posted an image on Instagram of the day’s work and the element of nature that guided my color choice. This yearlong daily art project resulted in A Year in Thread — 12 separate pieces, each begun on the first day of the month and finished on the last day. The compositions were improvised and grew by accretion, influenced by the colors, sounds, and activity I witnessed in nature. I used Valdani pearl cotton embroidery threads, natural-colored linen, and white linen that I dyed using walnuts from a tree in the backyard. A Year in Thread was first exhibited in March 2019 at the Hosmer Gallery in the Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts.
The 12 Year in Thread pieces function something like a calendar or diary — one that records not appointments and events, but color, weather, flora, and fauna. They allow viewers to immerse themselves in a year's worth of time and move at their leisure from one season to another.
On January 1, 2019, I embarked on another stitch journal, titled Daily Thread. One problem of A Year in Thread, I felt, was that each piece had to end on the last day of the month, even if it didn't seem finished yet (or, conversely, it had to continue through the last day of the month even if it felt finished well before then). So for my 2019 project, I decided that each piece would end when the composition felt complete and when my observations of the natural world were leading me to turn to a new subject.
Daily Thread consists of 18 abstract embroidery pieces stretched on 6-inch x 6-inch canvases. Each has a particular theme, chosen at the outset, such as "snow," "sky," "bark and bramble," "verdant," or "winged." As with my previous stitch journal, I stitched every day, usually early in the morning before going to work, using one color of thread each day.
As I did for A Year In Thread, I also made a "stitch log" for each of the 18 pieces — noting the number of each day and the color I stitched with on a piece of drawing paper. You can see the stitch log in some of the photos here. For me, the stitch logs were a way to document daily progress; I like to exhibit the stitch logs alongside the finished embroideries to give viewers a sense of the time devoted to each piece. (I'll write a post about the stitch logs another time — so if you're curious, stay tuned!)
The first piece of Daily Thread had the theme of "earth." I worked on it from January 1, 2019 through January 20, 2019. The colors chosen reflected those seen on the ground each day when I sat down to stitch — winter grasses, the tawny color of the far field beyond my yard, fallen snow. Reflecting the character of January in New England, the composition was mostly quiet and peaceful, with a slight suggestion of wind.
My next post will take a look at Daily Thread: Piece No. 2, which had the theme of "snow."