What Are You Stitching?

As we were preparing to share Helena Gum Moth as our Calendar project for October, we were reminded that there was an insect or two hiding within our What Are You Stitching? files. So this week we’ve decided to set them free…

‘I’ve started Home Sweet Home by Carolyn Pearce and have just finished the Strawberry Wall. What a fun project! I just love your magazine, all your inspirational stories and projects.’

It’s said that you should always start the way you intend to finish, and you Yvonne have started magnificently. Your strawberries are plump and juicy – something the caterpillar is just about to discover for himself! Home Sweet Home is certainly a project of passion, and we look forward to seeing your finished workbox.

‘Although I’d done cross stitch previously, I woke up one day in 2008 and decided I wanted to express myself artistically through embroidery. Shortly after, I met a prolific stitcher and overall wonderful woman named Mary Margaret Lovell. She lived about five miles from me in Columbia, Tennessee.’

‘She took me, as her guest, to the Nashville chapter of the American Needlepoint Guild and the Embroiderers’ Guild of America. I immediately joined and never looked back!

Sadly, she died just 8 days short of her 96th birthday but her legacy lives on in me and the innumerable others whom she mentored.

I still belong to the EGA and have made many friends and stitched hundreds of projects, including several from Inspirations. I stitched ‘The Praying Mantis’ for my sister-in-law Britt.’

Trish, we love your version of Lesley Turpin-Delport’s praying mantis from Inspirations issue #36 and it’s clear your sister-in-law did too! What a beautiful legacy Mary has left with you and countless others as she shared her love of needle and thread so willingly.

‘This is my beetle done all in single strands of mostly DMC stranded cottons on cotton.’

Sue, the detail you’ve been able to capture stitching cotton on cotton is simply breathtaking! There’s an iridescence and sheen to the beetle’s shell that had us thinking you’d achieved it using silk threads.

‘It is now about two or three years since I discovered the joy of embroidering butterflies. Relative quickly I emerged with the idea to make lifelike ones in their natural size that could be put into a frame or sit on a flower.’

‘Searching for inspiration, I stumbled across some places where you could buy beautiful, but real, dead pinned butterflies of all colours and species. This shocked me – collecting, breeding and then killing insects just for decoration?! So, I decided to make them with needle and thread instead.’

‘I thought, why not make them life-like so I can collect the beautiful flying jewels without killing them?’

Martina, your butterflies as every bit as lifelike as you’d set out to make them! Perhaps the title of ‘lepidopterist’ will be one you’ll be known for in your time with needle and thread?!

Do you see beauty in the insect kingdom, knowing it will translate beautifully into stitch? Or does the idea of replicating anything that creeps and crawls make your skin crawl?!

Whether your needles and threads love or loathe all things bug related, we’d love to see what you’ve created. Simply email photos of what you’ve created with needle and thread along with a few details about your stitching journey to news@inspirationsstudios.com