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How
I got into embroideryI just happened onto this site while suffering through a cold day here in the north of Canada. I read the letter from the editor and decided to reply as to what got me into embroidery.
When I was 10, I was given a gift in a Christmas exchange at school. This was a set of coloured handkerchiefs, and a small cardboard hoop and some thread to do the stamped embroidery. Having started on the kit, I was upbraided by my aunt for sitting inside on a sunny day. Being a contrary child, this made me more determined and, with my grandmother's help, I progressed. This led to a continued interest in embroidery, mainly counted thread techniques, and surfing the net has added to my knowledge. I have many pen pals resulting from this interest.
By the way I still have the unfinished set of hankies, in my box that used to hold all my threads (I need the floss cabinet from DMC now) which now just holds some keepsakes and an unfinished top for a crib.
Eva Beaton
ebeaton@pris.bc.ca
...
and ...For me, I think it was seeing my mother repair and extend the life of my slippers with bits of brightly coloured felt cut and embroidered into animal faces (wartime of course) and my subsequent pleasure in wearing them.
Angela Haigh
Sherborne, Dorset
...
and ...What started me stitching? I found a beautiful shop in Paris whose walls were lined with completed cross stitch pictures. I wanted to buy some but they wouldn't sell, not at any price. How's that for putting a value on your work! I had no alternative but to stitch and have been ever since.
sally@weegiftshop.freeserve.co.uk
www.hasties.com
...
andMy earliest memory is of my mother sewing, making a green felt needle-case with orange flowers. Later, in the 1940s, came Menai Jones (named after the bridge). She told us about an exciting new fabric, nylon, which dried in a few minutes. The most exciting thing, however, was her transfers on linen. I can remember embroidering them as fast as I could so as to make another. They were made into calendars with a small tab fixed by two ribbons. I then had a passion for transfers and bought any magazine I could afford with my pocket money which had the treasured transfer in the middle. (I still have some of them.) Major influences which fostered my love of sewing were my father, my work as a milliner and display artist for John Lewis, and various other teachers have kept alive a love of good design and drawing.
Gill Griffin
Perranwell, Cornwall
How
I discovered embroidery...September 2000
As a four-year old growing up in Germany my grandmother began to teach me embroidery. We started with simple kits and I was a quick study soon designing small rugs for my doll house using silk floss on canvas. This love to work with my hands continued throughout school where handwork was a weekly subject.
I have lived virtually all my adult life in Canada when three years ago I discovered City and Guilds in North America. I live in Calgary and travel a minimum of 12 hours 3 times a year to attend Gail Harker's Creative Studies Centre Part I Design and Embroidery. It has changed my life and I have not seen the world with the same eyes again.
Over the past few years I have explored knitting, spinning, weaving and dyeing and after starting with City and Guilds I feel I have 'come home' at last. Embroidery is truly versatile and captures my interest anew every day.
Anna Hergert
anna@fiberhut.ab.ca
How
I got into embroiderySeptember 2000
When I was 4 years old I was given some sewing cards. I finished them in about 2 minutes flat (being a precocious child!). My mother took the hint and pretty soon I received 'my learn to sew' book as a present. I worked my way methodically through the book doing all the projects - a shell shaped felt needle case - I think I did it in red felt with green overcast stitches, a caterpillar bookmark ( also red - only I think I did the stitching on that in yellow (and my colour sense has yet to improve), a pillarbox bookmark ( also red! - clearly we had plenty of red felt on hand!) and my masterpiece - a sampler. I still have the sampler (somewhere) ... I could never bring myself to throw it out but was embarrassed by the quality of the stitching so never had it framed. If I ever come across it I will have it framed.
Jo Verity
...and...November 2000
I'm a bit ashamed to tell of my first interest in embroidery: aged 3 or 4, I made (neat!) cuts into the hem of a hand embroidered cloth covering the treadle machine. Working the same treadle without the belt (speed!) and later being fascinated with the New Home's many foot attachments are happy memories, and hand worked pieces were always used around the house. "Making" was part of life.
Karin Coldrey
Melbourne, Australia
...
and ...March 2001
Perhaps we should always begin with our forebears. I certainly feel that my passion for stitched textiles is to some extent inherited. My great-grandmother (whose tiny rose-painted workbox from Paris I still have), my grandmother and her sisters (endless tablecloths, table mats and curtains) and my mother (drawn thread work, very exquisite) all devoted themselves to stitchery for at least some part of their lives. What a pity all their work was for daily use, so very little of it survives.
My first interest in the subject involved crinoline ladies. I worked several and thought they were infinitely glamorous, although they must really have been very crude. It is amusing to see better examples than mine included in exhibitions nowadays.
At boarding school, we had to have something to stitch while stirring adventure tales were read to us after supper. I made a number of unattractive tray cloths. Nobody did anything of interest that I can remember.
After the war, married and with children, I occupied myself with the usual crafts (although I would prefer to call them arts). Cooking, gardening, flower arranging, a large amount of knitting for everybody and, finally, crochet (and the piano, always an important factor) were all ever-present.
Eventually, the time came when the girls left home and were both working in London. My husband and sons were still around but I must say I did miss the girls. One day I was walking through the ground floor of a famous department store in Plymouth. All was colour, light and sparkle. Quite suddenly, no warning at all, an idea arrived fully-fledged in my brain. I would make each girl a fantastic garment into which she could change in the evening if she arrived home tired. These garments, soon to be called Wonderwear, would be contrived from assorted patches, knitted and crocheted and, where the patches joined at the corners, I would do an embroidery.
What a comprehensively thrilling project. I went at once to the wool department where they had all sorts of interesting threads, some of which I had never used before: Twilleys Bubbly, for instance, glitter-flecked, raffia, thick knit and two-ply.
The making of the garments is another story but I will say that the embroidery part was a continuous process of miraculous discovery. I have never stopped since, and the experiences and lifestyle I have had as a result are among the absolute highlights of my life.
Jenifer Murray
Newquay, Cornwall
How I got into EmbroideryMay 2001
I was amused to read the letter from Jo Verity in Australia as to how she got into embroidery. Her experience, at least, was not self-inflicted.
I actually saw my mother doing embroidery when I was four and said 'I want to do some'. From that moment, I was hooked. If I am asked who got me into it, I have to say that it was self-inflicted and that my mother was taught by her mother who, in turn, was taught by her mother.
I did my City & Guilds in my early twenties and must say that my mother thoroughly enjoyed it too. When I had to do something I had never done before, I had to show her. This included working with vanishing muslin, which was all that was available in those days, and machine embroidery when electric machines were nowhere near as advanced as they are now. My mother died many years ago and she would be enthralled by all the new fabrics, threads and machines that there are now. And if it isn't a little blasphemous, I am sure that she has searched out Constance Howard and they are both running classes in needlework for a multitude of angels. Now here's a thought: never mind angels, can you imagine Elizabeth 1, Mary Queen of Scots and Bess of Hardwick, as well as numerous other well-known stitchers from the past, being together? Don't you wish you were a fly on the wall?
Ida W Bradshaw
Chorlton cum Hardy, Manchester