Embroidering the Truth
Jul. 6th, 2009 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
I got a cute little embroidery kit today (I could not, for the life of me, find any sidewalk chalk except for some 3-D stuff in funky colors). It's got retro patterns in it like a hula girl, cherries, funky cats & a tiki statue. It's also got electric guitars, a skull, a heart w/a dagger through it. It's very cute.
I started thinking, though - I could get some plain cloth bags & embroider runes, ceremonial magic sigils or Vodou veves on them & sell 'em on e-Bay. You can embroider with all kinds of stuff - ribbons, metallic flosses, foil threads, fishing line (which comes in some funky colors & even glows in the dark), horse hair... In other words, if it's stringy & can be pushed through fabric, you can embroider with it. I used to do embroidery when I was a little kid, but I kind of lost interest in it along the way. I've got an embroidered pair of jeans & Robert at my job asked me if I did the embroidery myself - which, no, I didn't, Lane Bryant did it, but it made a huge lightbulb go off in my tiny brain. I very well could have embroidered those jeans.
It's hard to find embroidery pattern books anymore. People have gone to cross-stitching instead. It's the same principle, but a different technique. Personally, I think embroidery is a little more free-hand and versatile. I embroidered a million pot-holders when I was a kid. One had pumpkins & black cats on it & I gave the cats fishing-line whiskers. Not the most practical potholders, but they were decorative. I gave them to one of my teachers. At the time, I didn't know how to make patterns for them, but now I do, which means anything I can trace w/a heat-transfer pencil, I can embroider. Something embroidered with the serpent priestess of Minoa, anyone? Or Tarot card designs on Tarot cloths?
My biggest hurdle is trying to remember the stitches. Ack!
I started thinking, though - I could get some plain cloth bags & embroider runes, ceremonial magic sigils or Vodou veves on them & sell 'em on e-Bay. You can embroider with all kinds of stuff - ribbons, metallic flosses, foil threads, fishing line (which comes in some funky colors & even glows in the dark), horse hair... In other words, if it's stringy & can be pushed through fabric, you can embroider with it. I used to do embroidery when I was a little kid, but I kind of lost interest in it along the way. I've got an embroidered pair of jeans & Robert at my job asked me if I did the embroidery myself - which, no, I didn't, Lane Bryant did it, but it made a huge lightbulb go off in my tiny brain. I very well could have embroidered those jeans.
It's hard to find embroidery pattern books anymore. People have gone to cross-stitching instead. It's the same principle, but a different technique. Personally, I think embroidery is a little more free-hand and versatile. I embroidered a million pot-holders when I was a kid. One had pumpkins & black cats on it & I gave the cats fishing-line whiskers. Not the most practical potholders, but they were decorative. I gave them to one of my teachers. At the time, I didn't know how to make patterns for them, but now I do, which means anything I can trace w/a heat-transfer pencil, I can embroider. Something embroidered with the serpent priestess of Minoa, anyone? Or Tarot card designs on Tarot cloths?
My biggest hurdle is trying to remember the stitches. Ack!
