OKAY. So. The path of learning is not always straight or expected. Nor is blog posting, since I typed that first sentence intending to tell one story, and am now going to tell a different one. I was going to tell of the twists and turns my current project is taking, but I feel like maybe we should discuss how I got here first. So grab a beverage and maybe a snack, and lemme tell you a bit of a story.
As I mentioned in my very first post, I have been in the SCA since I was born, and “have been doing embroidery in some form for almost 40 years”. That “almost” is an actual 40 years now, being as I started when I was 7, and am now 47. Math is fun! My mom taught me cross stitch when I was 7 as a way to get me to sit still at events. The sitting still part didn’t really work, but I did enjoy the stitching so that stuck. I’m pretty sure my first project was stitching my name, and I seem to recall I finished J-u-d and maybe started the y but I’m pretty sure it got lost and I never finished it. After that I tried various kits, but nothing was geared for kids so my mom tried to help me just do simple shapes and stuff. I bought a few kits over the years, but being a "jump into the deep end and figure it out when I get there" kind of crafter, they were all above my skill level.
Fast forward to my mid-twenties, I was back in the SCA, learning new embroidery stitches and practicing them but only for fun really. Seam treatments (period or otherwise) were all the rage in the early to mid 2000s (AS 35-ish) and they weren't my fave, so I decided to teach myself blackwork instead, mostly using charts I found online, which may or may not have been historically accurate. Or if the pattern was, the usage might not have been. It was just for fun, or so I thought.
My local group, the Barony of Westermark, was making some new pillows for its Baronial thrones. It was decided that we would stitch the barony motto "Oh Westermark, your forests" in varying fonts and styles so that anyone who wanted to participate could do so, no matter their skill level going in. The result was a set of very fitting "ransom note" style pillows. This project gave me a chance to stretch my legs, so to speak, on new styles I'd not tried. You can see the ones I did here. These were the first time I had done anything that was not counted work or stem stitch (which I technically learned in home ec in 6th grade, but never used until many years later).
After the pillows, some life stuff happened and I took a bit of a break from the SCA. Next post will be how needlework pulled me back in after several years away.
