Whispers of Home Ec

First Embroidery: Finished, originally uploaded by kpwerker.

When I was in the seventh grade we had to take home ec. I hated it. Mostly because I hated my teacher. She was everything the stereotype isn’t—cold, hard, severe. What she lacked in imagination she made up for in negativity. I remember some of the projects we worked on that term, but one sticks out. It was a monkey pillow and I loved that thing. My machine sewing was uneven and the stuffing was lumpy, but I rocked the embroidery on the face. In fact, the only thing I learned in that class that stuck with me is how to do backstitch embroidery.

That feeling of success from embroidering never left me, but it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I sat down and did some for real (discounting minor features I’ve put on crocheted dolls and the like over the years).

I have a larger project in mind, but wanted to get my feet wet on scraps first. I cut a piece from a big, old curtain I’ve been harvesting for years, bought a couple of patterns (robot and big star, bird and flowers), and a bunch of thread and needles, and whipped this up.

It is intensely liberating to craft in a medium that isn’t yarn!

First Embroidery: Finished, originally uploaded by kpwerker. When I was in the seventh grade we had to take home ec. I hated it. Mostly because I hated my teacher. She was everything the stereotype isn't—cold, hard, severe. What she lacked in imagination she made up for in negativity. I remember some of the projects we ...

Tags: Crafts, Embroidery

This entry was posted on April 18, 2009 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Finished Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.