Everything Old is New Again

This past week didn’t come with any big milestones or shiny accomplishments. No finished pieces to photograph, no major announcements to make. Instead, it was one of those weeks filled with the necessary but invisible work: supply lists, class descriptions, schedules, notes, updating my website… The scaffolding that holds everything else up.

And stitching. Lots of stitching.

In between all the admin tasks, I kept returning to my hand stitching. I’m still working through the Ann Wood stitch book I started late last year, put aside for a while, and then recently picked up again. Her new challenge began this past week, and while I’m tempted to jump in, I’ve decided not to until I finish the pages I already started. I don’t mind being out of sync. For me, it’s not about timing—it’s about doing. I stitch more than fifteen minutes a day, and once I begin a page, I like to see it through to the end before moving on.

The invisible but necessary work I mentioned above led me somewhere unexpected.

Thinking about a new class I will be teaching later in the year, and samples to make, I remembered a project I started – amazingly – about twenty years ago. A large free-motion stitched design on a soft off-white silk, roughly 26″ x 36″. At the time, the plan was to paint it, but that part never happened. Still, I loved the stitched design so much that I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. I packed it away carefully, and there it stayed. What struck me, looking at it now, was the colour itself – a soft, warm off-white that feels especially resonant at the moment. There’s a quietness to it, a sense of calm and openness, the kind of neutral that allows everything else to breathe. It feels very much in tune with our collective desire for simplicity, clarity, and a gentle reset in a busy, uncertain world.

Seeing it again with fresh eyes, I felt that familiar spark: Oh. There’s something here. The piece no longer felt unfinished or abandoned – it felt patient. Waiting. And suddenly, I have a completely new idea for it, one that makes sense now in a way it didn’t then.

As I was standing in front of the cabinet, I looked down and – there it was – another long-forgotten work from my years of painting on fabric. A silk piece depicting a basket of peaches and grapes, painted on a light mint green background. It was meant to be part of a “paint of the month” project that never happened – it remained in the planning stages. But as I unfolded it and really looked, I was flooded with the memory of how happy I felt when I finished it. The colours are bright and confident. The blending is exactly where I like it. It holds that quiet satisfaction of something resolved.

The project itself may not have gone anywhere, but I clearly did.

Finding these pieces reminded me how important it is to honour the work we made in the past – especially the work that brought us joy, even if it didn’t lead to completion in the way we originally imagined. Not everything has to be new to be relevant. Not everything unfinished is a failure. Some pieces simply belong to a different moment, and sometimes they need to wait until we’re ready to meet them again.

There’s a kind of generosity in allowing old work to re-enter the present. It reminds us of who we were, what excited us, and how much we already knew – even then. And occasionally, it opens doors we didn’t know were still there.

I don’t yet know what these rediscovered pieces will become, but I do know they deserve attention. So for now, I’m listening. And I’ll share more as things unfold. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading. Until I write again,

Ana