The beauty of embroidery

When I was eighteen my family decided to do a Secret Santa gift exchange for Christmas. I drew my grandmother’s name and immediately was brought back to the memory of that day we spent together. For many years, since I had been old enough to take up embroidery without supervision I had considered trying to take up the hobby again. I had mostly thought about trying to remember what she taught me, and probably have to learn some things myself from the internet, in order to embroider something to a standard decent enough that I could give it to her as a gift, perhaps for her birthday. To show that I had remembered all those years ago when she shared a meaningful part of her life with me. To tell her that I remembered and that I still cherished that memory all these years later. This gift exchange felt like the perfect opportunity to stop procrastinated my plan by saying I would do it next year or next holiday, and actually embroider again.

I didn’t actually remember much from the one lesson I had a decade prior except the basic differences between stitches. I refreshed my knowledge by looking up an endless number of embroidery related questions then looking at ideas of different projects. I had wanted to make something practical like the pillowcases my grandmother used to adorn but when I searched embroidery, the image of artwork created on fabric placed in embroidery hoops was too beautiful to not want to replicate. I picked an image of flowers in a garden then went and bought a variety of colours of embroidery floss, an embroidery hoop, and a bunch of cotton fabric that I couldn’t find in a smaller quantity. Then I took a needle and some scissors from my mothers rarely used sewing kit and set to work.

I picked out my colours then estimated to length of thread I needed before unravelling it from the spool. I precisely cut the thread with sewing scissors and tied a knot at the end. I pulled the thread through the needle and begun to do my best to replicate the picture. I had to look up how to do certain stitches but most of the time I found myself embroidering relatively effortlessly. I would put on music or listen to podcasts while meticulously weaving my needle through the fabric leaving behind precise stitches. It begun to actually look like an image, the flowers and leaves actually recognizable and before long it was finished. It wasn’t perfect but it was surprisingly pretty good for being the first endeavour I had into the hobby in a decade.

Next to that memory of the little girl swinging her little legs from a chair far too big, learning to sew at her grandmother’s white-table-clothed dinning room table, I keep an equally cherished and heartwarming memory. Of Christmas Eve when my grandmother opened her Secret Santa present. The proud look on her face when she saw that her effort to teach her granddaughter to embroider had not been in vain was one I won’t soon forget. She laughed about how I had sewed through her tablecloth and commended me on how much I improved. We talked about our shared hobby, something new to me and familiar to her, created a bonding moment parallel to that of a decade ago. She put my embroidery on display on her dresser and although she had gotten a gift so had I.

Working on her present and given me a new love of the hobby of embroidering and that was something I continue to share with my grandmother today. I bought many more embroidery hoops and continue to stitch whenever I have time. To create new pieces of art that I give away to family and friends. The soothing ability to sit and sew, to relax while still feeling as though I am being moderately productive. Most of all, embroidery has given me a closer connection to my grandmother from how she taught that little girl holding a needle for the first time to how we talk about how to do different stitches or ask each other for new colours of embroidery floss, all the moments I have amassed with her due to our shared hobby our memories I will cherish for years to come.