Twitter by Sue Spargo

17th May 2019

If you’ve ever had the privilege of teaching children to embroider, you’ll understand the joy they gain from creating their own designs. Typically, their work is bold, incorporates unique shapes, is strikingly simple and features colour choices that are usually intuitive and unfettered. Their stitched art is gorgeous to look at, but perhaps most importantly, as they rarely feel constrained by rules or formal process, you can see their joy emanating from the needlework.

For those of us who have been embroidering for most of our lives, we often judge ourselves on our abilities (or inabilities) to master difficult stitches and complex patterns. Whether we consciously want to or not, the rules of embroidery shape what we create. We can become so involved in producing the perfect bullion knot or ensuring we’ve got the exact shade of blue in the pattern that we may lose sight of the joy that brought us to needlework in the first place.

Twitter from Inspirations issue #102 by Sue Spargo is a project which reintroduces that joy.

Sue Spargo’s name is synonymous with brilliant colours and bold designs. In this project, she has combined colour, simplicity and humour in a way that forces us to think about our own standards and expectations.

Her simple bird shapes remind us of childhood, and her riotous collection of colours brings back memories of paint boxes, coloured pencils and crayons.

Sue’s design influences stem from the variety of countries and cultures in which she has lived, including South Africa, the UK and the USA. But it is her fascination with folk art from different cultures that has informed much of her work.

By its very nature folk art is decorative, communicative and expressive in its own symbolic way. It’s sharing one’s culture through joy and creative expression more so than a demonstration in technical expertise.

The project Twitter demonstrates how both complexity and simplicity can co-exist with perfect harmony.

Sue has cleverly intertwined both the organic nature of folk art and a masterclass in needlework techniques by adorning her simple shapes with a wide variety of stitches, some of which may be challenging for the novice stitcher. But the lesson this piece can teach is that perfect stitches aren’t always the goal.

Try them out, see what happens. Experience the freedom of experimenting with stitches and colours around the cute, appliqué shapes, just as you would have when you were a child. Step away from self-judgement, let yourself go and create a project that is fun, colourful and leads us to a place where we radiate with joy. After all that’s what stitching is supposed to be all about!

We’ve rounded up all the Tweets for the Twitter…

One of the reasons we love the project Twitter is all the vivid threads and textured fabrics Sue incorporated into her design. This vast selection can create some challenges when sourcing your own materials, however.

Thanks to both Sue Spargo and our kit manager Sue Forrest, the power of the two Sue’s combined has enabled us to round up everything you need to re-create your very own Twitter cushion, almost exactly as it appears in the magazine.

With over 20 different fabric designs and colours, 11 spools of cotton including Eleganza perlé and variegated threads, 8 spools of wool/acrylics, 4 needles, buttons and elastic for a button loop, this is one Ready-To-Stitch kit that is going to save you a LOT of running around! Thank you Sue…

Make Your Own Twitter

Step 1 – Purchase Project Instructions

Twitter by Sue Spargo is a cheerful cushion with bright, appliquéd birds embellished with a great range of embroidery stitches.

Printed Magazines

Inspirations Issue 102

Digital Patterns

Twitter

Step 2 – Purchase Ready-To-Stitch Kit

The Inspirations Ready-To-Stitch kit for Twitter includes everything you need to re-create this delightful cushion: Fabrics (unprinted), buttons, embroidery threads and needles.

Kits

Twitter – i102 Kit

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