#yearendchallenge

sewing with Kesityu on my Italian Arthouse balcony - heaven!

Dearest Needlework Monday Friends and Community,

details and real buttons: a major focus this year!

Here at the 'year end' I'm participating in our collective rumination on the year and on the future... And yet there is so much to go over these past months - since I began my Year Of Mastery In Sewing in mid-March of 2023 - that I wouldn't know where to begin to talk about it all!

some projects were started and DIDN'T finish so well

Ultimately, my biggest joy and the up-levelling of my skills this year have come from community: from yourselves, and from meeting in person with other needleworkers. In particular of course, the highlight of my sewing year was @kesityu.fashion's visit for 3 weeks, and our epic immersion in fabrics, threads, visioning and future-planning!! I hadn't had that kind of intensive atmosphere of creative expansion in my house for a while, though I am a powerful creator and maker, fixer and inventor! Having company - even online sewing friends - is something I am recognising to be more and more vital in my worklife.

...others have been super-successful and I've worn them a LOT

My greatest blessing this year has been the glorious camaraderie on multifarious levels from communities near and far: sitting at home in Italy in my sewing studio was simpler and less charged with energy, then the build-up of enthusiasm around the kitchen table with Gemma and Nadine, expanding into comparing notes and experiences of making-with-fabrics and showing of what we'd made recently; cosied in by the fire under rather dimmer light with Nadine here in Scotland too, as she sewed her Berlioz jumper in the varsity style and I repurposed several stretchy black lace pieces into underwears and tops... Collaboration and enrichment of my confidence with my incredible time with Kesityu, as we opened up a volcanic creative outpouring and started making busy-ness ideas and dreams... Logging in to Hive each week to see what our Needlework Monday collective creations were, and being amazed at new and inventive garments and usefulness pouring forth! Getting such positive feedback that my confidence rose and rose, and finally feeling enough power in a calmed ego and rejuvenated inspiration, so I can self-initiate any and every project that my heart desires!

fastenings have also featured a lot in my learning this year

My achievements in terms of garments in 2023 are almost too many to mention! I've sewed multiple skirts and dresses - my favourites being the orange silk ones (one and two) and all the petticoats I repaired and made (like this one), a couple of quite complexly-constructed coats -(especially the denim one which won our jeans challenge! And the blanket coat!), reconstructed several blouses and trousers, constructed new triangular trousers, gloves and hats, wrist-warmers... And repaired numerous sheets, socks, underwear, a rucksack, mmmm - what else? Just, a lot! It felt deeply satisfying to have Kesityu's and my pop-up expo and sale of our clothing play-experimentation-achievements. The year seems to resonate with P O S S I B I L I T Y !!

more materials than ever to play with; here, making socks into beautiful new wrist-warmers

Another exciting aspect of my sewing journey that I have loved also this year, is the transition further into Living In Gift - the sense that the resources that I need for my projects are increasingly becoming more accessible. It is such a thrill to be gifted good fabrics and interesting old garments which I can make into new ones. And to come across such treasures - like the growing pot of natural buttons which I've been harvesting off of cardigans and jumpers, the silks and felted wools, the cashmeres and angoras, leathers and unique items, quirky zips and fasteners. It is very necessary to being consistently inspired, to have a sufficiently varied palette of colours, textures, forms and details to work with. As this increases, it has gotten quite chaotic at times... and then in each phase of my collecting, I just make more shelves, get more boxes or appropriate sacks, and reorganise again and again. I look forward to having a 'full studio', and all the right shelving and boxing to put it in!

our sprint to the finish, making more gloves and dresses for our shop!

The pop-up shop worked out very well too; it felt like this was the best set-up I have had at the Arthouse yet - in all my 14 years here in Guardia Sanframondi, and in all the events I've created and co-created at the Arthouse, this was the most beautifully succinct and lit, successful in selling and in connecting with friends and neighbours, as well as being a vital review of what I made in the past months and years. Reflecting on accumulating creations is such an important factor in harmonising our creative flow! Without sitting back and seeing what incredible things we've made, it is easy to get bogged down in imperfections and things we 'cannot do' (*YET!!) - which is a nonsense: so long as we regularly check in on ourselves, there is no reason to be negative about our learning pathway. It will be up and down, right and left, forwards and backwards, but always evolving, always moving forward or expanding outwards or inwards, in some way, shape or form.

cheers-ing with Kesityu in Guardia Sanframondi, having gotten our pop-up shop set!

Again, this is what I love and live for around creativity: the peace that comes in the centre of the chaos: it can come in a quiet solo moment, or in a vibrant wine-inspired chat with a sewing friend; it can be there in the sunrise with my morning cuppa, just as much as when I am wrestling with a tangled thread which seems determined to sabotage a neat line I am sewing! The more I sew, the more the peace infuses all things: it emanates out from what I am stitching, like a spiritual practise of meditation or prayer. The church of my sewing space becomes more lively and real, more present and ebbing-flowing, as I go on with each and every project.

allowing materials to guide the forms...

It was a hard year on many levels, and my stitches continued to solidify my vision, all the way through these months of loss and grief, hardship and scarcity. The stitches and what came together under them, remind me that everything can have creative potential, with an activated mind-heart-spirit-cosmos. There is never a dead-end, not on any level of reality: all things simply change, grow, recede and/ or transform. Nothing is inherently lost, nothing is impossible.

With the support from community here on Needlework Monday, and my friends 'In Real Life' face-to-face and heart-to-heart, and with the opening of the mind through seeing what others are able to achieve, I look forward to this new year and new life-full-ness of my career. Thank you all!!

www.claregaiasophia.com