Striving for perfection interferes with perfection. This is the life lesson I learned at Monday night’s free hand-embroidery class at Design Within Reach. As Rachel Hobson of AverageJaneCrafter showed us a tea towel she’d stitched, she explained that her grandmother was the kind of woman who’d look at your work and then flip it over to see if the back matched the front. The ideal, of course, is that the two should be indistinguishable. Don’t even bother with that, she told us. You’ll only drive yourself mad and probably end up quitting. But if you just have fun with it, then you’ll wanna do it all the time, and you’ll naturally become perfect.
Where were you when I was 5, Rachel Hobson?! I could’ve mastered so many hobbies by now!
When Design Within Reach sent out an e-mail a couple of weeks ago inviting people to a free class taught by StitchLab’s Leslie Bonnell, they didn’t expect to get 100 RSVPs. Of that, 75 people actually showed, which lends weight to the invitation’s proclamation that “the hand embroidery revival is here.”
When I arrived with my friend, Chronicle intern Kathryn O’Shields, the DWR showroom was already packed. Everyone was settling into their swanky DWR chairs, wearing cute boutiquey shoes, and chatting giddily as they drank punch and fiddled with the free sewing goodies they’d picked up when they walked in (mini sewing kits, instruction booklets, floss, and polyester dinner napkins with “atomic-inspired” embroidery patterns already ironed on). They were clumped into groups of 10 or so, which Bonnell and then Hobson addressed one by one as they made their way around the room.
We got ourselves started on the backstitching with the help of our books, and eventually Bonnell made it over to show us some handy tricks for threading needles and turning our backstitches in new directions. As always, she was friendly and efficient – she has that magical quality of being able to explain complex things with ease.
Next, Hobson came over and taught us the oddly gratifying art of making the French knot. Then she introduced us to the vast world of embroidery patterns: There are the old-school iron-ons made by Aunt Martha’s, which, as Hobson put it, range from retro-kitsch type stuff (like smiling pots and pans) to the just plain weird (cats doing laundry and that sort of thing). Then of course there are the updated patterns of Austin’s own Jenny Hart (of Sublime Stiching), with the swallows and other tattoo-inspired motifs (our dinner napkins that night had Hart’s patterns on them). And then most exciting is the potential for making your own patterns, which you can get from coloring books or just draw yourself.
Hobson showed us some of her own projects and did a great job of making embroidery seem both impressive and accessible. Plus, she was wearing the cutest shoes. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture for you.
I think most people finished their napkin projects that night, but I, being a slow, deliberate type, didn’t get very far. (You can see my napkin in the picture gallery if you want to see my lack of progress.) At one point, I actually leaned over to Kathryn and exclaimed, with no irony: “Look how perfect my lines and circles are!” That doesn’t bode well for my ever making it to the cats-doing-laundry stage.
This article appears in February 1 • 2008.