Thanks to two surgeries on my stitching hand, which left me with only 20% use of it, I never finished that one. I gave up embroidery for a long time while I learned to use my other hand, and that's when I started to quilt. Embellishing quilted pieces with beading, which probably isn't considered embroidery, helped me develop fine motor skills with the hand that still worked. Here's the abstract beaded golden swan ATC from the year I made 1000 trading cards:
As I got more confident I tried to do more with my embellishing, and started (carefully) trying to do freehand hand embroidery. My Pearl girl Victorian crazy tote was the first of that phase:
My first large-scale, self-designed embroidery project was the recycled linen quilt:
While it technically doesn't have a lot of embroidery (just a bit of feather stitching here and there), I'll finish up with the Zen Garden quilt, which I think shows I've grown as a stitcher:
Embroidery isn't a dying art (yet) but most youngsters don't seem to have the patience for it. I wish I had more skill, but I'm happy that I'm still able to do what I do. While the arthritis is eroding what I can do with hand work, I've probably got a few more years left to play. Embroidering the silk crazy quilt blocks this year should let me show off the best of my stitching while I can still do it.
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