Embroidering my Life
March 23, 2006
|
Needlework is one of my great pleasures. I love the process of designing a piece and then watching it come to fruition by the work of my own hands. I started embroidering when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My mother was always working on these large needlepoint pieces, especially as we’d watch NFL football. I grew up with a strange connection of needlework and football – and a love for both. We’ll get into my love for football at a later date.
I started designing my own work about 10 years ago when I still worked in theatre. I would sit backstage during shows and embroider this giant blanket. Each square was a design that represented a show that I had worked on. It became like an artwork form of my resume. I even had the costumer on one show asking if I could help with the embroidery details on some costumes. The blanket showed the progression of my career and the progression of my fiber art skills. The early blocks are just copies of the program covers from those shows, with very little original design to them. The actual execution is similarly simplistic.
As I kept going, my designs began to grow in creativity and complexity. I also began experimenting with new stitch techniques and my skill in that area also grew more confident. Each individual block became a complete picture that I could feel proud of and like I had accomplished something. To other people, it seemed like I was working on a never-ending project. To me, each time I finished a square – I finished something. I wasn’t worried about finishing the blanket.
The journey was the point to me. It was a reflection of my career and life choices. When you work in theatre you track your life by what show you were working on. When I look at that blanket now, I see years of my life. It’s a deeply personal scrapbook that only I understand. Even now, when I’ve been away from professional theatre for almost 5 years, I can pull out that blanket and remember all kinds of things that happened during the time of each show.
The blanket is technically unfinished. I changed careers before I had enough shows to fill the whole thing. I think there are a couple of shows that I never quite got to add to the blanket towards the end. Maybe someday I’ll add them. Maybe someday I’ll finish it off with the logos of the theatres at which I worked. For now, I’ll just continue to enjoy the journey and have fun trying new things.
Technorati Tags: needlework, embroidery, artwork, blanket, life, threads, embroidery design, self expression
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?