Sandra Kochan pursues her fibre art under the name ‘Sandra’s Embroidered Life’ and through her Facebook page has shared years of fibre explorations including sewing, felting and embroidery.
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Embroidery is part of her cultural background. ‘My maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated to Canada from the Bukovina region of Ukraine at the turn of the 20th century,’ Sandra comments, ‘and I still have pieces of traditional embroidery from my grandmother. I often reflect on these traditions when I am stitching away in my studio.’
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This year Sandra has embarked on a Stitch Book project as a way to stimulate small scale embroidery experiments. Each week, she stitches one 5 x 7 inch page and when 20 pages are completed, they will be assembled into a book based on a template from Ann Wood Handmade: 100 Day Stitch Book Project
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Why this approach? Sandra comments, ‘Makers tend to get really focused on completing specific projects and I felt it was time to focus on process and exploration without a specific result in mind. The first page was a bit daunting but after that the ideas really started to flow and it has been fun to dig around in my stash of materials and play around.
It also feeds into a big goal this year of using materials I already have. Everyone in the Guild seems to struggle with ‘the stash’ and I am no exception!’
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Sandra is more than half way through the project, and here are a few examples.
