spaces and stitches

Since I last updated this blog over a year ago, I...
...moved to New Zealand
...started making mail art every day
...moved into a new space that my sweetie and I are turning into Alphabet City. It's a community letterpress, book arts, zine and creative space. We're excited about it!

Anyway, over xmas, I did a lot of embroidery in a short amount of time.

For our nieces and nephews, we embroidered each a pillowcase. We mostly used Sublime Stitching patterns.

My two favorites:






I'll probably be moving to a new blog in the next few months, one that I will actually update on the regular. Stay tuned!

embroidery to the moon

Last week, I started to read Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon. A family I am close to had just returned from a trip to France, and I wanted to dedicate some of my mental travel to their recent experience.

I'm really enjoying the book. Some sentence may take me away from the text, my mind might wander, I'll go down a different path, but I can always return to the task at hand: exploring Gopnik's expat life in the City of Lights. I find his writing engaging, thoughtful, and quiet. I believe I could use similar discourse to articulate what I enjoy about embroidery.



I've finished a few more tea towel projects since my last post. I like that the projects are so focused. There's a clear finished point, a last stitch to be made. Watching a movie, my project in my lap, the pleasing repetition of stitches and tracing a line; it's a quiet practice.

I am a sucker for combining color, for finding just the right colorway. I love picking out a pattern, and then going to pick out a few colors for the project. I find it exciting to see colors together in tiny perfect skeins.

Also, as everyone is concerned with being more conservative with their spending, I think embroidery is perfect. The tools and supplies needed are very inexpensive. It's one method of creative embellishment that can turn old projects or clothing exciting again.

Today, I am working on my quilt top, and I am considering embellishing the quilt with little embroidered arrows. We'll see!

a finished embroidery project?

Before I moved into my apartment, I made a list of things to acquire in the very-near-soon. A very important item on the list: blank tea towels.

In fantasizing about the apartment, embroidering sweet tea towels to dry my dishes and hands was among my top domestic desires. As an adult, I've toyed around with embroidery, but never finished a project. My personal library has a few embroidery Zakka magazines I purchased while in Japan. Last year, I was completely stunned by the Pricked show at MAD. I have a few half-finished (or half-started, depending on how you look at it) embroidery projects, including some post-modern theorist christmas ornaments that I vow to complete before the tree goes up. So really, it was about time for me to finish a project with floss and fabric.

Last week, I got out the flour sacks I purchased at Bed, Bath & Beyond, and ironed on a pattern from the Stitch-It Kit that's been hibernating for years. Once I got started, I was surprised at how simple and fun I found embroidery. Having a *full* pattern to follow on the fabric made a huge difference. In the past, I'd sketched out rough estimates on practice fabric, and always been frustrated. I've already started my next towel! I'm looking forward to designing my own patterns and transfering them to the remaining towels via carbon paper. I love embroidery as a medium, and want to do more things with it in the future.

I'm really happy with how the kitten tea towel came out. I redid the legs after I looked at some stitch diagrams and was able to improve my technique.

Hand-embroidered towels definitely make for a more enjoyable dish washing experience. Oh, and Mrs. Myers. She helps, too.