Historically, I have always used second-hand materials when creating my wall hangings and pillows, but I wanted to go a different route when creating this piece. Having been in this textile slump this past year or two, not feeling inspired to create and even daunted to create, I took myself to Hobby Craft to scout their fabric selection and see what spoke to me. As a result and after a lovely chat with an employee, I came up with the idea that I wanted to match the fabric and thread to the colour scheme of the front cover. I don’t know whether it was the colours that brought me joy as I have fallen in love with primary colours recently or whether it was the fact I was creating something in response to something someone I love had created, but together these colours just sparked me with joy and it got me excited.

One thing that had also kept me procrastinating over the years to get back into textiles again, was the time it took to create stencils for the pieces and to embroid the textiles. Working now a 9-5, I just don’t have the capacity to create the way I used to which is something I think has contributed to my fear of getting back into textiles as I still hold myself against my fellowship productivity standard. So, whilst I was in lovely Hobbycraft, I picked up some basic alphabet stencils and some felt to take an applique shortcut inspired by the work on Cait McEniff (I highly recommend you check out her work, it’s gorgeous!). As a result, I had pure JOY creating this piece. I could do the tiny details of embroidery which was lovely, on fabric that made life a lot easier (the benefit of picking your fabric from a shop and not just improvising with what you have). I could then also do large-scale letters incredibly quickly and I love the appearance of felt being sewn into. To summarise without brain venting too much (I’ll save that for a blog post), I feel a fire has been sparked in me, hope that I can create again and for it to not feel daunting, scary or intimidating.