For this month’s Aurifil Artisan challenge, the prompt was Slow Stitch Summer which meant putting the machine aside for a bit and spending some time with hand stitching.
I knew almost immediately that I wanted to combine the challenge with something else I had been dying to try: cyanotype printing on fabric.
There is something about cyanotype blue that has always reminded me of sashiko—the deep indigo color, the contrast of light stitches against dark cloth, and that beautiful combination of simplicity and repetition. Once that connection appeared in my head, I couldn’t really unsee it.
So I started experimenting.
I tested some pre-treated cyanotype fabric sheets first, then moved on to preparing my own pieces of fabric and trying the process on raw denim. I experimented with different materials, exposure times, and arrangements, mostly just trying to understand what cyanotype wanted to do before committing to an actual garment.
The testing stage is one of my favorite parts of making things. There is very little pressure attached to a small scrap of fabric. It gives you permission to try something strange, make a mistake, change your mind, or discover something you weren’t looking for.
For the final project, I decided to use a bleached-out unisex denim jacket I had been saving in my studio.
The kids and I made a trip to the farmers market to look for flowers for the print, specifically choosing ones with interesting shapes and textures. I loved that little part of the project—the finished jacket would eventually become this very personal, heavily worked piece, but it began with us standing together at a market deciding which flowers might leave the most interesting shadows.
After all my testing, I was still a little nervous when it came time to expose the actual jacket. Luckily, the cyanotype turned out even better than the samples.
The flowers created these wonderful oversized blue forms across the back of the denim—some crisp, some softer and more abstract. I liked that they weren’t perfectly predictable. Cyanotype has a way of giving you control and taking it away at exactly the same time.
And then came the slow stitching.
I started with a paper airplane, a motif I return to often in my work. I liked the idea of placing something very graphic and familiar over these loose botanical shapes, almost as though the airplane were moving through its own strange blue landscape.
Inside the airplane, I began responding to the flowers that were already there.
Instead of covering the cyanotype, I used different shades of thread to follow pieces of the flower forms, adding small stitches to create highlights, texture, and depth. Some areas became dense with stitching while others were left almost completely alone. That part of the process was much slower than the cyanotype itself—and that was really the point.
There is a different rhythm to hand stitching. You notice the fabric differently. You notice each decision differently. Instead of moving quickly across an entire garment, you spend several minutes occupying an area that may only be an inch or two wide.
And eventually, little decisions start connecting to one another.
I added tiny crosses and knots around the larger cyanotype shapes, allowing them to scatter outward into the white denim. I wanted the blue to feel as though it was dissolving into the rest of the jacket—or maybe spreading across it. Somewhere along the way, the stitches started to remind me of tiny stars.
That changed the feeling of the whole piece.
What had begun as flowers and a paper airplane suddenly felt a little like a map, or a constellation, or something moving through an imaginary night sky.
I continued that idea across the jacket, letting the stitching become smaller and more scattered as it moved away from the main composition. Those little marks became one of my favorite parts of the project because they helped connect everything without needing to explain exactly what they were supposed to be.
Sometimes they are stars.
Sometimes they are stitches.
Sometimes they are simply marks.
The final detail is hidden until the collar is lifted. Inside, I added the words: “you belong among the wildflowers” It felt like the right ending for a project that began with flowers, experimentation, and the idea of slowing down long enough to see where something wanted to go.
This month’s challenge also reminded me that “slow” does not necessarily mean simple.
There are layers of decisions in hand stitching that are easy to overlook because the technique itself can appear so quiet. Where does the next stitch go? Which thread belongs here? Should this area become denser—or does it need space? It is a different kind of making than sitting at my sewing machine. And maybe that is what I enjoyed most.
The cyanotype created the first version of the artwork, but the slow stitching gave me time to live with it—to notice things, respond to them, and gradually turn the print into something that felt entirely my own.
Sometimes slowing down isn’t really about doing less.
Sometimes it just gives you enough time to notice what comes next.
The Aurifil Artisan Year
Month 3 of my year-long creative journey as a 2026 Aurifil Artisan—following each challenge through experiments, discoveries, finished pieces, and whatever I learn along the way.