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A long time ago, my mother taught me to embroider. I guess I was about 6 or 7 years old and she gave me some fabric and floss after I told her I wanted to learn, upon watching her make pretty flowers on pillowcases. She told me once that I was particularly fond of making "lazy daisy" stitches all over my sweaters with yarn. Some of the earlier "tries" weren't so good, but I was proud of the results anyway. With practice I got a lot better. Back then, I didn't use a pattern, I just "freehanded it". One day, one of my school friends begged me to stitch yarn daisies on her sweater. I did and luckily she liked it and her mother thought it was cute too.
As I got a bit older, I love stitching on tea towels, potholders and baby bibs (we always had a baby in the house). Still, I preferred hand embroidery but I did use iron-on transfers to sharpen my skills. When I was a teen, the embroidery stopped, because friends, boys, and The Beatles took over.
I've always been drawn to embroidery and notice it on everything even commercially made clothing. When I go to estate and yard sales and antique stores, I always have to look or buy something pretty with embroidery on it. I've always marveled a the skill and beautiful stitching that ladies did in bygone days. Embroidery was something all gentlewomen did. They made "samplers" to practice and improve their stitching skills. The "wrong" side of a piece of embroidery was often almost as pretty as the front side. Hand embroidery was done with great pride.
When I got married and became a young mother, I picked up my needle again and surprisingly could remember how to do some of the basic stitches. My son didn't get the pretty lazy daisy flowers on his pajamas but did get a few cute bunnies, kitties and trucks instead. At that time I was also a "stay at home" mom and decided to try to supplement our family income. One of my pen pals was an editor of a craft and needlework magazine. She asked if I knew how to do counted cross-stitch. At that time, I didn't. But she said she was looking for some original designs and she wanted me to try charting and stitching an original design on graph paper.
She sent me a designer's package which consisted of colored pencils, black graph paper, even weave cross stitch fabric and a complete set of DMC embroidery floss. (and to this day, I've always replaced each skein I used, so I still have every color in their collection) Her instructions were simple "color a design on the graph paper and then follow that chart and stitch it on the fabric." Seemed easy enough so I tried it. I was hooked!
Above (in both photos) are the results of my first of many submissions to that magazine. It got published (I was so proud!) Suddenly my editor made me one of her main embroidery designers and would give me specific assignments. Most of my work were samplers. My editor had me send her the stitched pieces and the graphs coded to DMC floss colors and she would have it professionally matted and framed, photograph it and send the finished piece back to me with a paycheck for the design. I ended up making a nice little bit of grocery money for something I enjoyed doing.
I wish that I had more of the designs I did. Many were given to friends and family as gifts. They both enjoyed them and I loved making them.
What comes around, goes around--because I don't do much counted cross-stitch any more, but I do a lot of hand embroidery (again) using some of the sweet vintage patterns that were popular when I was a child. And I still make lazy daisies!
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Jeanne taught me to say "rabbit, rabbit" upon waking up on the first day of the month-- for good luck. We've been saying this now for years. Rabbit, rabbit dear, Jeanne! May everyone's July be full of fun and good luck.
Indian Blanket/Firewheel Gaillardia
Indian Blanket/Firewheel Gaillardia
