Although I am no seamstress, I have enjoyed introducing the machined line in my painting practice. I love the fact that it embodies the labour of making, and that my lack of skill contradicts with the skill of generation of dressmakers. I recently jammed up my new Bernina B435 by trying to pass glued Mull fabric on canvas under the needle, I dusted off an old second hand Toyota that I bought second hand 20 years ago. When I started to use this old machine, the knob that adjusts the stitch types fell off and I couldn’t change the stitches, which I liked as the restriction was something the machine decided. The foot also slipped when I passed the canvas through, and it often jammed or stoped. This meant that I often had to stop and rethread and the time and labour in sewing a line across the canvas increased. The manual labour of putting down these lines showed in the jammed thread and loose ends, the effect were really interesting, it showed the mistakes, the lack of skill, the age of the machine, it was like an irreverence to neat and tidy machine sewing. I like the idea of machine sewing going out of control. A deranged seamstress, letting rip, disrupting the ideal of neat, functional stitching. I think the results are really good. I am reminded of my recent reading of Agnes Martin and her need to ‘turn her back on the world’ to paint, or rather that was painting allowed her to do. There is something all consuming about using a machine as it requires your full attention and is quite physical as you need to direct and guide the fabric, fold and manoeuvre, re-thread, attend to the bobbin. It is all quite involved and yet meditative at the same time because you see the needle move quickly and the resulting stitch appears in lines behind the needle action.