gentle arts

I never had any intention of writing books. Then again, I had no career plan, so maybe it was more a matter of never say never.

I feel like a dinosaur when I tell people I started blogging in 2005, but it always reminds me that not only did it give me my big break with book-writing, yarnstorm actually got me writing. It was the immediacy, the direct contact with readers, and the not having to wait to be asked which made me dare to write.

Because it did feel daring, For the first few posts, and then I became addicted to the thrill of pressing ‘publish’.

Nevertheless, I still find it hard to say “I’m a writer” when asked what I do. Because I see it as just choosing images, typing words, and something appearing on the screen. Or the page. Because the blogging led to a fair number of books, many on the gentle arts - of domesticity, quilting, stitching, baking, knitting. I still like the ‘gentle arts’ as a phrase because these are things which should be enjoyable, easy-going, soothing, absorbing, and not bossy, with a right or a wrong way of doing things, or a feeling of failure.

Here’s an illustration of my approach. Around the time of my third or fourth book, I was contacted by a TV production company. The person explained that they were planning a show to find Britain’s best baker and would I be interested in hearing more about it? “Oh, no,” I said being high-minded but also totally honest, “I don’t see baking as a competitive activity”. Bang went any possibility of being involved in Bake Off. And I would say the same again today. The idea of someone crying because their chocolate cake has failed and they’ve been humiliated on national television is, for me, emphatically not what the domestic baking is all about.

This and my gentle art books all feel like a long time ago now. There have also been seven children’s books for an American publisher, a book on looking at stained glass, and these Substack newsletters since then. So I was surprised and delighted when the publisher of The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking (published in 2010) contacted me last year to say they wanted to reprint it. As much of what I write these days has a short existence, it is rather wonderful to think that a book written sixteen years ago still has plenty of life in it.

I’ve worked with a lot of editors. Indeed, with my first few books, virtually every one got pregnant and left half way through the process. But this time, I’ve been fortunate to have excellent continuity (tbh, we worked quickly) with Laura and Daisy at Pavilion, and I can’t emphasise enough how fortunate I am to have someone like eagle-eyed Daisy looking at my book.

We have updated it in places - introduction, resources - but the quilts and the instructions and the tone and the message have not changed. And it is also lovely to see that it hasn’t dated, that Kristin Perers’ amazing photographs and art direction still look wonderful, and the text still works. It has a new cover and the Hydrangea Quilt is doing great work once again. It will be available in mid-June and is already on websites such as Bookshop.org.

I’ve been remembering how the book came to be. I often used to think that writing had to take ages to be good - like Flaubert or Proust - but this one came out of a Simenon-style burst (he wrote books in eleven days). I was ill in bed and thinking about the type of quilt book I’d write, and just like that the full list of quilts and the whole outline of the book appeared on a piece of A4. So that’s what I made and what I wrote. And far from being the result of agonising and stress and trying my hardest to unravel my brain and wring out the thoughts and words - because that is how it can feel - this one flowed and almost sewed itself.

The quilts are still doing sterling service on beds and settees, here and in children’s flats, and the delight in seeing them looking good and keeping people warm and cosy never diminishes. Nor does the daft thrill of looking up my own book/s in the British Library or Cambridge University Library catalogues CUL (and hoping no-one is looking).

Talking of quilts, I read in the FT the other week that the makers of the forthcoming four Beatles films have been to a dealer on Abbey Road looking for quilts because apparently the Beatles brought them into the studio to make it homelier, and John and Yoko collected ‘vintage quilts’. News to me. The only one I’ve come across so far is the All You Need is Love ‘bedspread’. Maybe I need to look harder?

Happy Sunday!