Natalie Chanin - The Geometry of Hand-Sewing: A Romance in Stitches and Embroidery from Alabama Chanin and The School of Making

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Table of Contents

Guide

THE GEOMETRY OF

HAND-SEWING

For my mother, Myra Brown,

who taught me that mathematics and geometry

are languages of love.

And for Euclid and Norton Juster,

who both understood the beauty of parallel lines.

NATALIE CHANIN

Author of

Alabama Stitch Book, Alabama Studio Style, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design,

and

Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns

Photographs by Abraham Rowe and Rinne Allen

/

Illustrations by Sun Young Park

ABRAMS / NEW YORK

A ROMANCE IN STITCHES AND EMBROIDERY FROM ALABAMA CHANIN AND THE SCHOOL OF MAKING

CONTENTS

Embroidery and sewinglike the study of numbers and

shapesare as old as humankind. It seems that as soon as

human beings were able to conceive of twisting fibers into

yarns, they began manipulating those twisted fibers into fab-

rics. Even before the basics of making fabrics were under-

stood, humans were embellishing shelters, clothing, and

objects with patterns based on geometry. Some civilizations

tended toward the simplest and most austere uses of threads,

yarns, and ropes, while others strove for the most highly

evolved and elevated versions of embellishment imaginable,

including, in the most elaborate examples, embellishing gar-

ments with strands of spun gold and precious stones.

At my company Alabama Chanin, and now The School of

Making, weve developed our own style of stitched embellish-

ment that involves applying threads and flosses to fabrics

made from cotton fibers, primarily organic cotton jersey. In

this book, we share with you all that weve learned over the

years about stitches for you to use in your projects, those

inspired by our work and others. Weve taught these stitches

and techniques to hundreds of artisansboth young and

old. While we did not invent them, weve spent thousands of

hours exploring and expanding upon them.

In , we introduce our Stitching Cards as a way to

help you understand and practice basic stitches. In ,

we present the tools and materials that inspire and inform

our sewing and embroidery, and in , we show you

how to work the stitches. are about ways to

elaborate on the stitches presented in -

is

an index to make finding instructions for the stitches easy.

The act of making can change your life, help you become

a more informed consumer, and aid you in passing on impor-

tant knowledge to the next generation. I know that I am my

best self when I am making and sharing. I hope the lessons in

this book will instill you with confidence, deepen your love

for the arts of hand-sewing and embroidery, and inspire you

to share your love of making with others.

In the spring of 1973, my mother, who had recently earned a

masters degree in pure mathematics, introduced me to her

love of geometry through the book

The Dot and the Line: A

Romance in Lower Mathematics

by Norton Juster. A whimsi-

cal tale of love across divides,

The Dot and the Line

remains

one of my all-time favorites. It begins, Once upon a time

there was a sensible straight line who was hopelessly in love

with a dot. Youre the beginning and the end, the hub, the

core and the quintessence, he told her tenderly...

Im not a mathematician, but I am a designer who loves

geometry, that is, the relationship among points, lines, and

surfaces. I was never a stellar math student, but Ive always

had an intrinsic understanding of spatial relationships, and

this understanding serves me every day in my job as the cre-

ative director of The School of Making, the educational arm

of my fashion and lifestyle company Alabama Chanin.

Norton Juster dedicated

The Dot and the Line

to Euclid,

who is known in some circles as the father of geometry.

Around 300 B . C ., Euclid wrote his love letter to geometry

called

Elements

and this treatise became the basis for the

geometry we all learn as children, for explaining how points

and lines interact to form the shapes that create our world.

When we stitch by hand, we use geometry without realizing

it. Think of the dashes of a straight stitch moving down a

seam or around a circle; the points at which the thread enters

and exits the fabric create the linesor, in other words, the

geometryof our work.

While I promise you that this book is not a treatise on

Elements

or Euclidean geometry, I do consider it a love let-

ter to geometry as it pertains to stitching. Like most people,

I learned different stitches over time as I desired to use

themwithout thinking a lot about how they related to

geometryhowever, when my team and I started to look at

them closely and to compare them, we realized that they are

all based on a geometric grid system. We then developed the

Stitching Cards in this book based on these grids in order to

make learning the stitches as easy as childs play.

INTRODUCTION

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A SENSIBLE STRAIGHT LINE

WHO WAS HOPELESSLY IN LOVE WITH A DOT.

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, by Norton Juster, 1963

THE GEOMETRY OF HAND-SEWING

A NEW WAY TO THINK ABOUT

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