I'm SO EXCITED to share some absolutely awesome news: Emma Broidery at the wonderful DMC Threads blog has written a feature on my Floral Heart project!!!
The post is called "The Creative Process" and is well worth reading! Emma contacted me a few days ago by e-mail and asked if she could share three pictures from my Floral Heart set on Flickr for an article. Naturally, I was thrilled, and said yes! She sent me a link when the post went live this morning, and I clicked to read it with delight and, yes, a little apprehension - because I had no idea what she would say.
I was floored, FLOORED, in the BEST WAY POSSIBLE when I read her marvelous, thoughtful, very kind words about yours truly and my stitching! I was curious as to why she had wanted to use my floss toss photo and the one of my two test pieces, rather than close-ups of Floral Heart, and the post provided an insightful answer.
When I started this blog in 2011, my aim was to share my stitching progress with other stitchy bloggers because I found that reading about the ups and downs of their projects was very inspiring. Over the last few years of reading and writing about stitchy things, I have found that blogging has provided helpful information about what does and does not work, which has made me a better stitcher!
But until I read Emma's article, I had never thought about sharing my progress on my projects as being a "window" to how I work and how I think - what Emma calls "The Creative Process" - but it is so very true! It is astounding and humbling to imagine that sharing a photo of a simple floss toss might be relevant to someone else!
This is one of my favourite parts of the profile:
I love that she took the time to photograph the threads she used in her project – this is an extra step that can tell us so much when preparing for a new project, or pinpointing what works and doesn’t work in a piece. For example, she mentions that she didn’t end up using one of the threads pictured, and notes the ones she did use. I like that she took the time to test her threads first, to find the shades she really wanted…
What Emma's post has brought home to me is the importance for ALL STITCHERS to share our "Creative Processes"! Talking about and sharing photos of our Works In Progress (WIPs) is just as useful - if not more so! - than posting only about the Grand Finishes. This is easy to forget, especially as there is increasing pressure on bloggers to "stage" their photos to look "perfect", which in reality is an impossible goal.
Stitching is not always smooth sailing. There can be tangled and fraying threads, knots and snags, messy stitches, broken needles...and the back will never, no matter how hard we might try, look as good as the front! But part of the JOY of stitching is finding a way around these things, of working through the many small obstacles, and making each work MEAN something to us that is far more than the sum of fabric and thread. With every work we do, we LEARN, and that is something to celebrate!!!
So take time to share your thoughts as you're stitching! It is so fun to follow a project from start to finish, to see how intentions manifest and change in the process :) I will be making it a point to take and post more WIP photos in future, and am working on a detailed account of how Floral Heart came to be - it was really a Happy Accident and those are the very best kind of Mistakes ;) - that I hope to post up soon :)
DMC Threads is currently writing an informal series of stitcher profile articles, of which mine is the latest. I hope you'll take time to scroll down through Emma's archives to read some of them. I particularly enjoyed the features on glow-in-the-dark thread, creative projects and colourful stitches! And I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts on your own Creative Process! Feel free to write below :)
8 comments:
That's awesome news about your pictures! I agree that there is a lot of pressure to post pictures of finishes and having pictures perfectly staged (definitely NOT one of my talents lol). I really enjoyed reading the DMC post and reading this post. Congrats again!! :)
Wow! Fab :)
I think that WIP photos and info are great... For me personally I enjoy reading how people stitched the designs and to see how they are enjoying (or not) the journey of stitching a design. And yes you're so right - we always want to have the perfect picture of a finished design... But not all of us are good at the staging of a photo... I know I'm not!!
Congratulations! It's always great when such sites and writers pick up on your work.
Wow! Congrats - you deserve it. :)
You really do seem to be on a roll and turning into quite the celebrity within the stitching community. ;-) Seriously speaking, I truly believe(and I'm sure many others would agree)the recognition and fantastic write-up by Emma Broidery is no less than you deserve. :-D
In response to your blog post, you have made some excellent points. I know I am guilty of skipping the WIP stage and sharing images of the Grand Finish. Once I'm fully immersed in my stitching, I'm often far too focused on it to think of pausing to share images of it. Even if images of a WIP aren't shared, I do believe it can be useful to share one's experiences about a project. For example, like why a particular type of thread was lovely or a nightmare to stitch with. As for 'staged' images that look 'perfect', well I'm not so sure this is something that applies to me. ;-)
Aurelia, how exciting and congratulations! I enjoy the DMC blog and was so excited to see your embroidery on there! I will give some thought to your idea of showing pictures of stitching progress, I tend to not do that much. Enjoy your celebrity, you deserve it!
(REPOST: Sorry - lots of typos I missed!)
Thank you all so much for the lovely congratulations! As excited as I've been about Emma's wonderful post, I'm even happier to have all your very kind best wishes :)
Karen: Staging is too one of your many and varied talents! You take such lovely pictures, and I enjoy each and every one you post :) The pressure to stage though is a very hard one to resist indeed.
Stitching Noni: Thank you so much :) I absolutely agree with you about following WIPs - well said! And you do too take great pictures - it's funny how so many of us do and *think* we don't, LOL ;)
Emma: Aw, thanks very much :)
Agi: Thank you muchly, that means a lot coming from you, since your work is rightly featured all around the internet so often :)
CS: You can't see me but I'm blushing :) Seriously! Thank you so much. And you hit the nail right on the head - I get so caught up in my projects sometimes too, and that excitement of just "one more stitch" means I can hardly drag myself away to go get the camera, LOL! As you know I stitch quite a bit at night too and the lighting then is not conducive to good pictures. I agree totally Re: WIPs, and Re: Images - don't be foolish, you take wonderful shots! (If I haven't ever told you that, I should have). To me, what matters most is a good clear picture of the work, not the "styling" with props and such: often, that's actually really distracting!
Karen: Welcome to ES! I'm so glad we connected on Flickr :) Thank you so very much for your wonderful comment. I know you tend to go for the Grand Finishes, and why not - your work is so lovely and you're so prolific with it :) What we were talking about on e-mail, about embroidery being so much faster to work than cross-stitch, is probably a factor too. Even the smallest cross-stitched design can sometimes take AGES, LOL ;)
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