Embroidering the truth? (Embroidery)

Member Name: Celandine

Product:	Embroidery
Date:	12/06/01 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tactile, beautiful, and whatever else you want it to be

Disadvantages: I can't honestly think of any

Embroidery. The image this word conjures up are generally of the cross-stitch variety. Rows of neat little stitches, arranged cleverly so as to make a complete picture. I've great respect for anyone with the patience and dexterity to make good cross-stitch samplers, and I love looking at the finished result, but personally, I just can't do it. I don't have the right mentality to do it properly, I think, and however often I start a sampler, I always end up incorporating different stitches, then adding a bit of applique, maybe dyeing a bit of the fabric.....a smidgen of patchwork here and there and voila! I've made something that isn't remotely cross-stitchy at all. It is, however, embroidery.

That's why I'm writing this. Because there is so much more to embroidery than those little charts you see in the craft shops. I'll start with the Bayeux tapestry, that incredible embroidered historical document. So well known that I won't go on about it here, it's a narrative depiction of important events. It's beautiful, as an object, but also useful; and that's another thing I love about embroidery, the way it combines use, beauty, and information.

If you think about the amazing appliqued and patchwork quilts of 1850's America, you see not only the skill, the thrift and the love that has gone into the making of them, but also, each quilt tells a story, or marks an event. You get widow's quilts, marriage quilts, crazy patchwork. Soldiers made quilts while they were on the march, beautifully intricate quilts from dyed blankets. Okay, these aren't strictly embroidery, but the stitchwork in them is so beautiful that it almost qualifies as such. These sorts of needlework give an insight into real peoples lives, bringing history to life, and making it into a snug bedcover.

There's tapestry, too. Mediaeval tapestry depicts the everyday life of the rich and famous of that time. People hunt, make
music, and embroider in these tapestries adn embroidered hangings. The finished products were hung on draughty castle walls to provide warmth as well as decoration. Cross stitch samplers started much later, as a way to teach schoolgirls needlecraft - and the true sampler incorporates all the stitches they might need to mend, to decorate, and to create any sort of useful and celebratory needlework in their adult lives.

I could go on, and on about the history of needlework, but I won't, I promise, as I know not everyone finds it as fascinating as me. What I really want to talk about, too, is how wonderful, and exciting, and beautiful, needlecraft is now, and how fun it can be to do. Throw away any preconceptions, please. Needlework can be whatever you want it to be.

I, personally, love machine embroidery. If you've any sort of bogstandard sewing machine, and an embroidery hoop, you can usually do this ( I won't give instructions, because every machine is different, but if you've got a manual, it should tell you there). Machine embroidery can be a bit of a hit and miss affair, however. It is if you're like me, and enjoy it so much you just don't want to stop, but this element of chance, in itself, can also give you some really beautiful embroidery. The machine sings along, I sing with the machine, and just sometimes, quite by accident, you get something that really works, almost in spite of yourself. I like 'drawing' people with machine embroidery. I make little wonky people, yes, but they develop characters of their own, so long as I work fast enough, and don't get prissy about what I'm doing.

I don't really adhere to the school of buying specialist threads, and suchlike accoutrements, either. If you like doing particular projects, and know exactly how you want things to turn out, then of course you need these, but if you just enjoy making things for the sake of it, then I'd just buy threads
when you see an interesting one on sale, build up a little stockpile, and use them when you want to.

Embroidery silks, too. I buy these from markets whenever I see them on sale cheaply, rather than shelling out for lots of specific colours. You can always dye them yourself. Just make up some cold water dye ( mix the colours up yourself if you're looking for a specific shade) and pop in some thread. I dye up batches of crochet cotton if I'm feeling particularly broke, or bored.

You don't have to embroider with thread, and you don't need to use specific stitches. You can embroider with almost anything. Raffia, paper, hair, grass, little strips of cloth. So long as it goes through a needle, you can embroider with it. I quite like using specific stitches, sometimes, but other times just throw anything I want to at the fabric, in any way that seems right at the time. It's fun. One contemporary embroiderer used dental floss to make a large hanging. It looked fantastic.

And why stick to a plain background fabric? If you want to do a proper, traditional sampler then you need to, but if you just want to experiment, then you can use anything. Velvets, bits of old shirts, silk, a woolly jumper. Anything can be embroidered, and it's a fun way to recycle old clothes.

Oh, and please never throw away a button either. Buttons can be a lovely addition to sew on to any sort of embroidery. You can buy beads, if you like, or make your own from fimo or salt dough. Jumble sales are a lovely place to find old necklaces to break up and use as beads. I've bought old clocks and sewn their innards on to embroidery, too.

Anything goes. That's sort of what I'm saying, here. Embroidery can be anything you want it to be, and about anything you want it to be. When Ellie is big enough to draw a proper picture, I'm going to take it as a template and embroider it for posterity. With embroidery you can make three dime
nsional pictures, pictures that cry out to be touched because of all the different textures involved....and pictures that look like, well, pictures. Make a traditional sampler if you've the patience for cross-stitchery, or just do whatever you want to if you haven't.

I suppose I see embroidery as an organic thing. It's got all the history, and the beauty, of painted pictures, but it's free from all the boring waffle which can surround paintings. I hate to see embroidery confined to charts and thread. Yes, there's a place for the charts and cross-stitch, but embroidery itself is so much more. It's a way of enjoying the texture and colour, and a way to make things that are both practical and beautiful.

I like making things, anyway. Small, colourful, lovely things, that don't really mean anything to anyone but me, and probably look quite silly to anyone else. Embroidery lets me do it, in whatever hotch-potch crazy way I want to at the time. It's fun, and then you get a picture, or a bedspread, or a jacket at the end of it. Something unique, and special to you, that you couldn't buy from any shop.

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