Learn Embroidery

In the first November of my stitching life, I decided to embroider my sister-in-law’s initials on a four-inch hoop as a Christmas gift. Two letters. Backstitch. DMC 310, black, on natural linen. The simplest design a person can make. I started on November 2nd at 8 pm, half-watching a cooking show, fully confident I’d be … Read more

My third-ever project was a lavender sprig on a little sachet for my sister’s birthday. DMC 3042 for the stems, DMC 3041 for the buds, stitched on a scrap of quilting cotton I’d cut with pinking shears like I knew what I was doing. What came out looked like a purple sea anemone having a … Read more

I own a hoop that hangs in my laundry room as a warning to others. It’s a 6-inch hoop of red poppies on white Kona cotton, stitched for my mother-in-law’s birthday with DMC 321, the classic Christmas red. It took me nine evenings. When I finished, I did what seemed obvious: I filled the sink … Read more

The first time I walked into a proper embroidery shop, I stood in front of the floss wall for eleven minutes. I know it was eleven because my sister texted me twice to ask if I was still alive. The wall held maybe five hundred paper-wrapped skeins, each stamped with a number I didn’t understand, … Read more

In April 2019, two weeks after my disastrous Michaels supply run, I chose my first real project at 11:40 pm on a Tuesday: a free PDF called “Wildflower Wreath” from a craft blog, printed at the downtown Columbus library the next morning for twelve cents a page. It was eight inches across, packed with satin … Read more

On a rainy Saturday in March 2019, I walked into the Michaels on Bethel Road in Columbus, Ohio with exactly one goal: buy everything I needed to start embroidering. I walked out forty-seven dollars and eighty-three cents later carrying a Dimensions beginner kit, a grab bag of “assorted craft floss” in colors nobody would choose … Read more

The night I learned that not every pen works on every fabric, I was tracing a sleeping fox pattern onto a fat quarter of navy Essex linen. It was November, the light was gone by five, and the fox was meant for my friend Priya’s baby shower gift the following Saturday. I grabbed my beloved … Read more

My first real lesson in embroidery hoop tension arrived on a rainy Tuesday in March, at my kitchen table, halfway through a sunflower I was stitching for my sister’s birthday. I’d hooped a square of quilting cotton in a 6-inch beechwood hoop, cranked the screw until my thumb ached, and started the petals in DMC … Read more

In May 2019 I stitched four linen napkins with little bluebell sprigs in DMC 798 for my mother’s 60th birthday. I knotted every start and every end, exactly the way the kit instructions said to, wrapped them in tissue, and watched her get misty-eyed at the table. A week later, at her house, I tossed … Read more

My first needle took twenty minutes. One needle, twenty minutes, on a gray October Saturday in 2016, at the kitchen table of my first apartment, while I tried to stitch a strawberry sprig I’d traced from a library book onto a scrap of white cotton for my sister’s birthday hoop. The floss, DMC 321, frayed … Read more