La vie en rose

One thing I've come to realize is that I don't need anyone to believe in my dream. The only person that needs to believe in my dream is the most important, myself.

Having a spouse that doesn't get art, can be quite frustrating at times. ("You have the weirdest hobby. I don't know anyone that does embroidery.") The world's need for art and design is evident in everywhere we look. The world would be a boring place without aesthetic and functions of beauty- besides the beauty that's found in nature.

I found embroidery during my university days, fell in love and never looked back. When I graduated and began working on my Series of Perpetua, I spent a lot of time sitting at home in the living room stitching for hours while listening to music or watching Netflix. It was serious meditation and fun as the hoops progressed. Recently, I've been working on a series to get out of my creative block, which has turned into an experimentation process. At first the idea of the series was linear where I would complete one embroidery hoop a week, but that quickly fell through for a couple of factors:

1. Lack of inspiration

2. Perfectionism

3. Lack of natural lighting during the Wisconsin winter (I like embroidering with natural light and this was frustrating working 9-5 and getting home when it was dark already.)

4. Working during the week- I used to plan out hoops during the week and then try to stitch, photograph and post them to Instagram during my 3 days off.

5. Oh yeah can't forget this major one... procrastination. I can be lazy sometimes.

The challenge quickly became a chore, something I felt like I needed to get done; thus, I eventually got bored of it and avoided stitching.

I'm currently on hoop 8 out of 52, which is quite sad since currently as I'm writing this we're on week 29 of 2021. I've extended the "deadline" of the series challenge to end when I eventually get to 52 hoops- whenever that'll be- maybe it'll take a couple of years.

Hoop 8 is a 13" hoop based on a song.

Inspiration:

Originally for the next hoops, I was going to base several hoops off of different colors that were inspired by different songs. I scrapped that and then had the idea to create an illustrative wall hanging that was based off of personal experiences. I ended up scrapping that, going back and forth before deciding on a large hoop based on the song Rose by Squidji. I came across this song after hearing CICATRICES by him that featured Lous and the Yakuza. Rose blew me away at first listen, it was nice and chill, I could get lost in it. Music is a big part of my creative process and I've been getting into French music since the latter half of last year. Upon looking up the lyrics to Rose and (Google) translating them, the message of the song was cute and I could relate to the chorus:

With you, the world is pink

You made me forget when I was alone in the dark

For me, you did so many things

In real life, it's you who give me hope, yeah-yeah

From the start of the hoop I felt as if I had already messed up. Most of the fabrics I use are back from my university days. I have a ton of satin in eggshell, gold, black etc. and I try not to buy fabrics and instead use up the ton I have. The fabric I chose for this hoop is a color I ordered as a custom one from Spoonflower and never used in a university project. I already had cut a square for a previous hoop, but was ecstatic to find I had enough for a large hoop. In the end, I cut too much when scaling the fabric down before putting it in the hoop. There was no saving it, so I cut muslin for the back since the satin was thin and...ending up cutting the muslin too small on some sides. Maybe there's a chance I can save it?

Over the days:

Day 1: Starting is the hardest part of the process. I ended up using 20mm paillettes and bent them to create flower petal-like shapes.

Day 7: So yeah that time skip and not much has been done... I picked it back up after a couple of days. I saw that Netflix had added the Twilight saga and watched the the first and second movies before moving onto Naomi Osaka limited series. I ended up adding some seed bead clusters along with seed bead and sequin combos.

Day 8: Also on day 7 I ended up adding stacked sequin clusters. Day 8 I added gold bugle beads around a sequin cluster.

Currently

So this week I found myself eager to get home from work and embroider. I work with industrial embroidery machines during the day, so the slow pace of hand embroidery is much more controlled than one driven by a machine. Eager to come home and get into a mindful state has been a nice get away from the usual laze of after work routine. I feel accomplished and creative. With this new hoop I've gone in a different direction than my usual ones and have embarked on experimenting with new techniques such as the turkey stitch which is seen in the final full image of the hoop. I still have a long way to go and so many hours to put into the hoop, and I'm pretty excited to see how it goes in a couple of days. Getting back into the habit of embroidering has been nice by taking it slow. Originally I had a put a time limit on when I should be finished with this, but I scrapped it figuring it would be less stressful and more fun by not having a deadline. Because of that, the lack of deadline has been quite interesting. I've also already come up with a name for it, La vie en rose. Pinks with hints of blue and of course my favorite, gold.