I can’t say exactly when I first started being pulled towards hand embroidery. I remember pinning several “geeky” themed embroideries on Pinterest like this Harry Potter Themed hoop by pinkleo on Craftster.

For a long time though I pretty much dismissed hand embroidery as impractical, purely decorative, and non-functional. I mean, I have limited crafting time, so I felt like I needed to have something somewhat utilitarian at the end of whatever I was working on to make it worth my time. But recently I have stumbled upon the embroidery technique of needle painting (also called thread painting and silk shading) where “long and short” stitch is used to embroider realistic portraits of animals, people, still life… pretty much whatever you want to paint with thread. It absolutely grabbed me!

Facebook algorithms are eerily good because I believe it was there that the site Domestika.org was suggested. They were having a sale on their online crafting classes and one was “Painting with Thread” by Gimena Romero. For less than $10 I received access to over 3 hrs of videos, printable patterns, instructions of how to transfer to my fabric and then step by step instructions for each section of the embroidery. Well worth it!

The practice project for the online course was a great entry into this technique and really helped me understand the concepts and how to, hopefully, make it look like I wanted it to in the end. I started to think I might be able to apply those principles to my own projects.

I know that I am still very new to this art form but I’m incredibly impressed by the artistry that is possible. All you have to do is to look at the work of amazing embroidery artists like those below to be absolutely blown away with the technique and the soul of their work! They elevate craft to art form. I could just scroll for hours through these accounts. I particularly adore the rustic, woodland animal aesthetic!

I think that hand embroidery may end up filling a crafting niche for me that has previously not received a lot of attention, that of artistic expression. I have done a lot of knitting and crocheting from patterns and I love having a beautiful, useful object at the end of my work. I’ve done work with felt and likewise had something fun and useful. And while there are many things you can do with hand embroidery that will be practical (decorating objects you will wear or use, using it to mend clothing etc), pure decorative, artistic expression is not something I have explored very much- but I am very excited to try!