A Thread In Need Is A Thread Indeed


Winter 2017 was a time when I finally found my borderline and started to change step by step. When I think about that period of time now, I can't believe that so many things have changed since January. I'll come back and tell, what exactly changed during the last 8 months, but now I want to throw back to the late winter/early spring period. Exactly then I found my new hobby, that, in the end, cured lots of my problematic issues. 
And that's embroidery.
(Here should be a comment from a random hater, that embroidery is for grannies;).


I should start from the beginning. As a kid - I hated those tiny little miserable stitches with all fibers of my soul. I was into clay and polymer clay later (was even creating some accessories and selling them), but never-ever into embroidery or, for god sakes, knitting. I couldn't even finish a tiny 10x15 picture with cute sheep and a dog on it. I left it after months and months of trying. But then, in my late 25's, I discovered, what is modern embroidery and fell in love with it. And that was my stage one: the observation. 
I started to follow embroidery artists on Instagram. I was thirsty, amazed and totally inspired by them. Especially by Teresa Lim. Teresa blew up my mind once and for all. That brought me to stage two: obsession. 
Then I was horrified. I started to have a big problem with concentration. I literally couldn't read 20 solid pages without pulling my hair, look on my cats, or just daydreaming. At work, I couldn't do only one thing at the time. If I was on a phone - I had to draw some doodles or just senseless stuff and switch between tabs while working with data. Everything was in chaos. I imagined my mind as a big fragmented room. Nothing was in order there. And that was my stage three: despair.
And then I found my old hoop. That one, that I hated so much. Actually, there was still a messy picture in that hoop regarded Mother's Day. I could see that I did that in a hurry, I could see how much impatient I was. And then I understood, that this is going to help me somehow. That I'm going to switch millions of times and finally get those fragments in my head together. So I just took a piece of fabric, hoop, random threads, that I've found at home and draw a leaf that I saw on my IKEA curtains. And just started to stitch. Stage four: trial.
Then I decided to start a set of local birds, that live all over Ukraine. I was fascinated. I still am.



And for some unknown reason, I started to see how my mind is getting clearer and sharper from one day to another. I guess that moment I've found it. My stage 5: meditation. 



I'm very far away to call myself an artist. I'm also very far away to say, that I'm productive because basically, I made only one full piece with a blue tit on it. But I definitely know that I will go further. And what I also know, is that embroidery helped me to find concentration again. So if you struggle with something, that I struggled with - thousands of little stitches on a piece of fabric might help you. 
Here's my very first finished work and the one, which is in progress:


Do you have any meditative hobbies?:) 

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2 Comments

  1. But what is modern embroidery like? I didn't really get that from your post. Works of Teresa are impressive, but I guess you need to be an artist in the first place?

    As for meditative hobbies, for me it was scratching (like this http://juliannakunstler.com/art1_scratch_art.html). I really liked working with the stylus, creating a picture out of the black (blank) surface. But then I realised that I wasn't actually a creator, I was just recreating the picture someone else had drawn. And in order to become a creator, I lack artist skills. And it was over.

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