My relationship with the needle arts is . . . as they say, complicated. Now in my 70th year I don’t expect the relationship to change much.
I became acquainted with the art gradually. My first exposure was seeing a softball-sized tangle of embroidery floss that belonged to my mother. I love detangling objects so I spent a long time working through the mess until I had a nice collection of multi-colored threads in sundry lengths. I should say here that I never saw my mother engage in the art itself. I suspect the tangle represented her last and maybe first attempt. (In her defense, she was a working mom in the 50s and 60s when grocery stores closed at 6 pm, banks at 3 pm and Swanson tv dinners were just beginning to appear. Such a lifestyle does not lend itself to the slow and stately needle arts.) But it didn’t matter that mom wasn’t teaching me. I belonged to a church that believed in teaching their young ladies between the ages of nine and twelve the womanly arts of embroidery, knitting and crocheting. My church no longer teacher these skills, partly because we are no longer living at the edge of wilderness and women can buy such artwork ready-made, but mainly I think it is no longer taught for the same reason we don’t golf in church: it stifles true emotional expression the teacher and student felt, especially when the teacher had to teach a blankety-blank Southpaw like me to knit and crochet.
There are a variety of needle arts, thank goodness, because you definitely need to find a good match with your personality. Knitting, I discovered quickly, is not for me. Once I finally learned to knit, I made a pair of slippers for myself which, because of cheap yarn and my penchant for tight stitches, felt like walking on gravel. It left long-term impressions on my soles, and my soul. Crocheting presented the same challenges to learn and I lacked the patience for stitching an hour with the traditional crochet thread and having only a one-inch circle to show for it. I did manage to produce two afghans once I graduated to big hooks and yard. Embroidery was another matter. My first attempt was the preprinted sampler I learned on at church. It was pretty simple. After a lapse of several years while pursuing education, I tried crewel but it just didn’t work for me. I hated the stress of having to make a decision at each stitch, whether to go over or under that thread. Finally I just rolled the threads into a ball and left it—I am my mother’s daughter, I guess. Counted cross stitch saved my needle art career. Here there were no decisions to make, only instructions to follow. I started small with figures in tiny frames designed as Christmas ornaments. Over the years I moved to larger and more nuanced projects but always using counted cross stitch or aspiring to counted cross stitch. My OCD personality delighted in collecting every DMC floss color I could find and exactingly winding the thread around a little card labeled with its DMC color.
Eventually I created my magnum opus. I found a cross stitch pattern for grandparents which could be personalized with figures and birthdates of each grandchild. My three children and my brother’s five exactly matched the eight-figure pattern. All I had to do is personalize the hair color of each figure which stretched my artistic talent to the max, I might add. The entire piece was about eighteen inches wide and twelve inches high. I had it custom framed and presented it to my parents. Two months later my sister-in-law announced she was pregnant with kid #6. I still haven’t forgiven her. I don’t blame kid #6 though and I was happy to give her a nice present on her wedding day a few years back.
During 2020, I again picked up my hoop and needle and concentrated on doing a cross stitch based on the famous Norman Rockwell painting of Santa kneeling at the manger. It was complicated and required a strong magnifying glass and many hours to complete but I am pretty sure it helped me avoid killing my husband who had to work at home during the Covid lockdown. Such is the therapeutic benefit of the needle arts.
So, as I said, it is complicated. These days I look at my foot-high stack of patterns, my eight boxes of numerically organized floss, my gnarled knuckles and wonder if my needle art days, such as they were, are now behind me. Maybe so, but a lot of treasured memories are there also.
That is probably the most interesting response I have EVER read on FR...and I’ve been here as long as you! You need to have that published in a needle arts magazine! It. Is. Perfection! :)
So glad you didn’t ‘off’ the husband during lock down, LOL!
I was into Cross Stitch for many years, too. My ‘magnum opus’ was an Angel in about 50 shades of blue, that I worked on for probably 15 years, on and off. I finally gave up and gave the half-finished thing to a friend who finished it beautifully and had it framed and she still uses it as Christmas decor.
Again, just an awesome post. Thank you SO much for sharing that! :)
Love your essay of lifetime needlework process of elimination! (I'm going through some old Fiber Arts and gardening threads today.)
I once read that needlework is very satisfying when you are angry because it involves stabbing something over and over without harming anyone!