stitch and bitch

[toujours_nigel]

 I used to embroider rather a lot as a child, and I started at I think 3? Thereabouts, at any rate. One of the Wee Rhea stories is about the time I stitched my frock up into my embroidery hoop. Another is about the time I rucked up my frock before starting and consequently tried to stitch my thigh into my embroidery hoop. I was... a handful, let's say, and significant parental and grandparental effort was expended in keeping me occupied. A book would do it unfailingly, though I might take the book and sit inside a cabinet or on a wall or in the high branches of a tree; embroidery would do it most of the time.
School of course made us stitch samplers rather desultorily till the fifth grade, and more seriously since. Knitting as well, but that I pushed off to my mother, who is very fast, since I haven't the patience for it. We did cushion covers and tablecloths and such. Last thing I ever did was a landscape my grandfather drew freehand, a beautiful thing I haven't seen in years, because my grandmother hoards and then forgets. That was in Grade IX or maybe X, and then it sort of faded. I was getting into writing, and didn't have room for more than one hobby, and there wasn't any impetus from school. I've never been a self-starter, and any time I picked up a needle since, I'd get partway and then stop and never resume.
I've been doing better in the last year and half. Starting June last year I've done seven small hoops in all, and an eighth larger one has been on the shelf for months and will get started on soon. oh, and a cushion-cover in 2016, forgot all about that! The trick is to pick things i can finish before I get distracted, or like enough to return to even if I am: quotations and the like. Then you get to have the spark of satisfaction about having finished a thing, which really truly helps.
Thing is, I used to get a lot of surprise/resistance about my interest in embroidery, being as it was distinctly girly and I was distinctly... not, back in school and even through college. I also get shock about cooking, for much the same reason. Embroidery didn't fit, though idk what would have since never have I ever been sporty. i'm just quiet and snarky and sit in corners a lot, in my head embroidery works just as well as reading to support that image. I suppose reading is gender-neutral as an activity? I dunno. Conforming people are odd and incomprehensible. To complicate all this, the accomplished embroiderer in my family was my grandfather, who had never met a visual art he did not love and have some deftness in, so it was never to me a feminine thing at all. (Ditto with cooking, and my uncle; even my father's learning now he's retired: it's one of his projects.)
All of which is to say, I'm here, I'm queer, I embroider.

Comments

[nyctanthes]

That's a lovely hoop.

You've reminded me that I used to cross-stitch, back in elementary school, and I enjoyed it a lot. I'll never be a knitter, but cross-stitching is something that might be fun to get back to.

[toujours_nigel]

I used to like cross-stitching as a kid, but I have a feeling the counting and patterning might be a tad overwhelming for me right now. But it looks so nice... maybe in August after I've submitted I could try.

And thank you.

[dragonlady7]

I need to get into a regular embroidery habit as well. I keep picking it up, and then it falls by the wayside. Part of my problem is that I never have concrete enough ideas; they're either vague, or I have too many and can't narrow them down into feasible things, or I just don't know what to do so I do nothing.

Such a fascinating backstory!

Ugh I've promised myself I'll do a cushion cover this month and I have literally no idea how to do it or where to start. ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh.

[toujours_nigel]

I have... two ideas for future projects of which one I know is doable. but oh boy I feel your pain. I either plan endlessly or not at all, and in neither case does anything happen.

Such a fascinating backstory!
I think I was a very interesting child, yeah.

[dragonlady7]

The whole idea of teaching embroidery in school-- we definitely never had that. My mom desultorily taught me cross-stitch on plastic canvas when I was like four, but I don't think I ever tried it with real fabric until I was an adult out of college.
My mom has some vintage embroidery samplers from the 18th and 19th centuries in her house, some of them family pieces, and I sort of wish we still did them? maybe I'll work with my niblings on it if any of them show inclination. it would be cool to do a thing, you know? but i dunno if there'll be interest.

... maybe we should start a community where people share embroidery ideas and patterns. i wonder if i could entice a particular fled-to-twitter refugee to join us here if i set one up. !! not this moment, but an idea. i clearly can't maintain the habit on my own!

[toujours_nigel]

My school was fairly old-fashioned in that regard. We also had compulsory classes for art and singing and dancing--at all of which I am awful--grades V through VIII. However, most schools and boards in India do have at least an optional craft class, so idk. You guys have shop and home ec, right? Something like that.

I grew up cross-stitching, but that was honestly more my grandfather than my school. Most girls, I imagine, either had their mothers do the lot, or paid the local craft-stores.

[dragonlady7]

We had compulsory art and music, and then in gym class there was this utterly bizarre compulsory unit on square-dancing that it turns out dates from Henry Ford somehow and it's absolutely bonkers.

And yeah, we have wood shop, metal shop, home ec, that stuff, but they're usually really brief and only in middle school. (My time in wood shop is immortalized in a scar across one thumb from where a bandsaw gave me a fantastic body mod that it took several stitches to repair.)

There's nowhere I can think of in the US where you could go locally and commission someone to embroider you something by hand. I mean, Etsy. But the idea of having that in a craft store-- I mean, tailors do alterations, but I've never even done that once in my whole life. The idea that people just-- organizedly know how to do handwork-- it's kind of outside my experience.

[toujours_nigel]

yeah we also had PE. I hated it. Drilling every year. :(

I can't imagine charging people for embroidery hoops the way I see on Insta etc, tho I'm sure there must be a market among the yuppies. Breaking into it is my side-hustle plan.

And, I mean, these shops won't stitch you just anything on commission, but people who take Home Science in IX-XII have set work prescribed by the relevant boards of education, so the shops where you can go to buy supplies will happily take your money and churn out socks or kids' sweaters, etc. They aren't tailoring shops. I do find it very strange how rare tailoring is in the US; so much so that--like hand-embroidery--it seems either prestigious or quirky to get clothes locally tailored, while here getting them from a mall is extremely cool for the middle-class.

[lilliburlero]

I remember, aged 9, getting on famously with our mandated art-class patchwork project, only to find I had stitched it to my clothes, and the misery of having to unpick it all and trailing miserably behind everyone else in the class for the rest of the term.

[toujours_nigel]

oh lordy I can just imagine. It's worse when one's being having a great and accomplished time. 9 was about when I started stitching through my fingertips for fun and making the other girls squeal.

[marginaliana]

I really like that piece!

I do cross-stitch, which to my mind is way easier than the more free-form embroidery. But I didn't pick that up until relatively late, long after I'd been doing sewing and knitting.

[toujours_nigel]

Thank you!

I haven't done cross-stitch in ages, and last I tried I found it difficult to concentrate on, but I found everything difficult to concentrate on at the time. Perhaps I'll give it another go, I do have a couple pattern books back home.

[moetushie]

My nani tried to teach me when I was eight or nine, but I had no patience or time for it. I would rather lay around, reading, or trying to paint like my mom. It wasn't until much, much later I gave sewing a try. I did one big project (all the curtains in my house!!) but it's fallen to the side again. But your embroidery is rad.

[toujours_nigel]

I've never done any functional sewing beyond, like, buttons. I should try, but I'm afraid I'd get maybe as far as cutting stuff up and then get bored. My nana used to make dresses and all, and we've still got his ancient Singer back home, in tolerably good repair.

I too would much rather lie around and read, hence the decade-long gap the moment school stopped insisting on it.