Making it small enough to start

It just took ten stitches to gain some momentum.

In a previous essay I wrote about my desire to take my eldest daughter’s drawings and embroider them onto fabric. Nice idea, right? In theory it was and, for a moment there, it seemed completely doable (I even called the essay “The softest possible first step”). I had the fabric. I had the needle and thread. I had more than enough drawings to choose from.

But then I got stuck on the best way to transfer the drawings onto the fabric. I asked in our community group for some advice, but even figuring out which route to take felt too much. It seems like such a small challenge, but when you have a preschooler and a small baby, any challenge can become a big one. I needed time to experiment and figure out the best option, and that’s something I don’t have much of at the moment.

For our new experiment, we’re thinking about enoughness. What if the skills I have, the fabric I have, the notions I have and even the ideas I have are enough?

With this change in perspective, I realised the goal post I’d set for the previous experiment was still too far away. At least for now that goal post is too far away (this is where I gently remind myself that capacity is elastic. Just because I can’t do something now doesn’t mean it will always be this way).

I thought moving the goal post from drafting a pattern and making a garment to simply using a pattern I already owned with fabric I already had would be enough. But even that felt impossible. So I moved it again, to embroidering Lyra’s drawings onto fabric. And yet somehow that was still too far away.

For this experiment, I decided to appliqué a design onto a calico shopping bag. A shopping bag I already had. With fabric, thread and fusible interfacing that I already had.

And do you know what?

I’ve already started.