Embroidery is the art of embellishing textiles with needlework. A craft that's been around since antiquity, it's been experiencing an upsurge of interest in the past few years. Just like any other art form it can be customized to express your own personal perspective and style, as can be seen by the wide array of talented embroidery artists My Modern Met has featured over the years. While everyone is drawn to needlework for their own reasons, we’ve compiled five aspects of embroidery that should make you consider taking up practice.
Once you've learned a few basic embroidery stitches, you can sign up for one of My Modern Met Academy‘s embroidery classes, including Intermediate Embroidery: Getting Creative With Printed Fabrics taught by Floor Giebels and Mixed Media Thread Painting: Learn to Embroider Your Travel Memories taught by Maria Zamyatina. Both e-courses will show you how needlework is for more than your grandmother's pillows.
5 Reasons to Start Embroidering
To stop yourself from doomscrolling.
We live in a world where its difficult to completely unplug from the internet and social media. Scrolling on your phone, while also binging a new Netflix series is a habit too many of us are guilty of. With embroidery your hands are too occupied to scroll through Tik Tok or Threads. Unlike using your phone, working on a piece of embroidery will leave you feeling accomplished.
It’s an eco-friendly way to stay creative.
Fast fashion is one of the worse culprits of excess materials collecting in landfills, but we all go through slumps where we feel less than inspired by our wardrobe. With embroidery, you can not only get better an mending clothing, but you can embellish pieces so that they are completely one of a kind. It's even a great method of personalizing gifts to loved ones.
There's a low cost of entry.
Even though a pencil or just three primary colors of paint can be enough for illustrations and painting, it can be a real test of willpower to shop for art supplies for a new project and not buy up the whole art supplies stores. To get started with embroidery all you need is a needle, thread, and a piece of fabric. If you have an emergency sewing kit in your junk drawer, here's the perfect way to use it. Make it eco-friendly again by using scraps of fabric from clothes too worn to wear. Additionally the supplies are much easier to keep small and compact, which leads to the next reason to consider embroidery.
You can make art on the go.
While its not too difficult to doodle in a sketchbook while riding the subway to work, painting is less conducive to travel. With embroidery, you can just pull your project out of your bag and start stitching. And if you feel shy about sketching in public lest any bystanders look over your shoulder and become art critics, it can be a bit harder to see where any embroidery piece is going in the early stages. This lets beginners get in more practice and build up their confidence. It's so portable, it's even a great way to capture your favorite travel destinations as Zamyatina teaches in her class, Mixed Media Thread Painting: Learn to Embroider Your Travel Memories.
Embroidery adds dimension to other art projects.
If you already love painting, it's easy to combine embroidery to create textured and layered mixed-media artworks. This type of mixed media is exactly what you will make when you take either of My Modern Met Academy's embroidery classes as they both involve incorporating images in several different modes. In Intermediate Embroidery: Getting Creative With Printed Fabrics, Giebels will teach you to make collages with thread and fabric printed with your own composition.
These are just a few of the reasons folks are becoming passionate about this formerly underrated art. Find your own reasons by taking an online class at My Modern Met Academy.
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