I’d Rather Be Embroidering

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Katya Rucker: Hey there, this is Katya, host of I'd Rather Be. I wanted to give you a quick heads up that this episode contains one swear word, and it's coming up in these first two minutes. The coast is clear after that.

[00:00:16] If you happen to come across an embroidery sampler from the year 1772, you might find a verse like this stitched into it:

Let virtue be my greatest care and study my delight. 

So shall my day be [00:00:30] always fair and peaceable my night.

Girls as young as five years old were producing these samplers as a core part of their early education. They stitched the alphabet, numbers from zero to nine, and their own names and birth dates. But embroidery, like most things, has changed a lot in the last 250 years. Our guest on today's show is currently working on a piece that is decorated with a menagerie of squashes and pumpkins, and she's stitching onto it the now famous Colin Nissan phrase—

[00:00:57] Caroline Matas: It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. [00:01:00] 

[00:01:06] Katya Rucker: Welcome to I'd Rather Be, a podcast about hobbies and passions and how people have discovered and made them a central part of their lives. I'm your host Katya Rucker. To quote one of my favorite authors, Liz Gilbert in her book, Big Magic, which is all about living creatively, “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then [00:01:30] stands back to see if we can find them.”

[00:01:33] The reason I love this quote is it implies we're on some journey to find something we don't even know to be true about ourselves, at least not yet. And to me, these strange jewels are the things we discover sometimes completely by accident that make us feel most alive and most happy. We can't get enough. We're willing to sacrifice time and money, and sometimes a lot more to devote our energy to these crafts that call to the deepest [00:02:00] part of ourselves.

[00:02:02] So I'm here to find out how people have discovered these jewels within themselves. I also want to put myself in their shoes as much as I can and dabble in these creative pursuits alongside them. As the saying goes, you won't know if you like something until you try it.

[00:02:16] Caroline Matas: I'm Caroline Matas, and I would rather be embroidering.

[00:02:21] Katya Rucker: Embroidery happens to be one of the most ancient hobbies and art forms that exists. It's something that prehistoric humans were doing over [00:02:30] 30,000 years ago. And it's distinct from sewing in an important way. The word embroidery comes from a French word that translates to embellishment. To embellish, to decorate, to enhance the beauty of a piece of fabric, or even create a standalone art piece -- this is what embroidery is all about. Here's Caroline talking about the kind of embroidery she creates. 

[00:02:50] Caroline Matas: There are a bunch of different types of sewing and there are a bunch of different types of embroidery. So I do more like a free-hand embroidery. [00:03:00] So you can program, like an embroidery machine to make some things. So like a lot of the kind of, sew-on patches or iron-on patches that you would find in a store are made by a machine, which is also cool and also requires creativity and stuff. Um, there's also cross stitching, which is where you do counted stitches, so it's more kind of filling in boxes with the same kind of stitches but in different colors, so it makes more of like a pixelated look. And I [00:03:30] do just free-hand embroidery, which means that, you know, I can use all different kinds of stitches to make kind of just a free-hand pattern, which makes it feel a little bit more like you're kind of painting with thread.

[00:03:42] Katya Rucker: While she toyed with the notion of trying embroidery for several years, it wasn't until early 2020, right before the COVID 19 pandemic hit, that Caroline first took up her needle, thread, and embroidery hoop. 

[00:03:54] Caroline Matas: I had seen some friends, like since college and stuff, friends and [00:04:00] acquaintances take up the hobby and they were just making amazing stuff. And I was so impressed by it and just kind of wondered, like, is this something that I can do myself?

[00:04:09] I love crafts. I love, um, decorating things. I love making things myself, and I've always approached new crafts and new hobbies with the idea of kind of: Why couldn't I do it? You know? 

[00:04:24] Katya Rucker: Caroline has become a prolific embroiderer in less than two short years. I could see at least three of her [00:04:30] completed pieces hanging on walls in every room in her house.

[00:04:33] So I wondered what was it about this particular craft that took hold of her in a way that was different from all the others? 

[00:04:40] Caroline Matas: I have a lot of thoughts. So I'll say, you know, a lot of different things at once. Um, I think I was initially drawn to it because seeing other friends, making, you know, embroideries for wedding gifts and baby showers and stuff like, you know, approaching my [00:05:00] thirties, that was just kind of the stage of life I was in. Going to a lot of weddings, friends having a lot of babies. And to me, there was something really special about the idea of making something that was unique, that was personal, that was handmade, but also that is usable.

[00:05:19] Um, so like being able to embroider a baby blanket for someone is just like such a special thing that kind of connects to the past, but also like [00:05:30] can be an heirloom. I just like, loved the idea. I also love the idea of doing an art form that has been seen traditionally as women's work and thus kind of like undervalued as an art form, um, because it is hard to learn how to do and like, it does take practice and time and, um, on the one hand kind of anyone can, can pick up a needle and do it, but you have to put time and effort into to making it, [00:06:00] um, to making it into art.

[00:06:02] There's a meditative aspect to it as well. Um, once you have kind of drawn out on your canvas what you want to embroider and you've lined up all the colors you need to use, and you're just sitting down with your materials, you can kind of zone out. Um, I find it like fairly zen to just sit and stitch over and over and over.

[00:06:23] Katya Rucker: The more Caroline learned and dabbled into freehand embroidery, the more she began to feel like she was no longer on the [00:06:30] outside looking in.

[00:06:31] As her comfort with the craft progressed, her motivation only increased as she began to notice the subtle differences in technique that could differentiate a medium quality embroidery piece from a high quality. 

[00:06:42] Caroline Matas: So in the same way that, you know, other art forms, you kind of, there are higher and higher levels that you can aspire to.

[00:06:50] That is like one of the things that keeps me really going with embroidery is, I will go, you know, look up other people who do embroidery on Instagram or [00:07:00] Reddit or whatever, and just be absolutely blown away by what they're able to accomplish to the point that I can't even like, understand how they achieved the effects that they achieved and being able to always kind of have a new goal to reach is pretty great.

[00:07:18] And the other thing about it is like, there's kind of a freedom of expression there. So you can do a lot of formulaic pieces, but you can also do weird stuff. Like [00:07:30] you can do whatever you want.

[00:07:30] Katya Rucker: I initially assumed there was a pretty limited list of things people like to embroider. You know, like clothes, towels, or hats.

[00:07:39] But if you think of literally any object that you can get a needle and thread through, chances are someone has already embroidered it. Artists have embroidered dead leaves, the hoods of cars, and tennis rackets. Professional artist Judith Klausner, who's based in Somerville, Massachusetts, has used thread to embroider mold, a slab of butter and a fried [00:08:00] sunny-side-up egg onto real pieces of toasted bread.

[00:08:03] I spoke with Judith about how she came up with the idea to embroider food.

[00:08:08] Judith Klausner: It was actually somewhat a return to one piece I had done in college where I sewed a washing instructions label onto the center of a piece of toast. And, uh, it was really satisfying. I do have a sewing background in addition to a sculpture background, so, combining them has always been something that I enjoy doing, which means generally taking [00:08:30] sewing and combining it with non-fiber materials. So I thought I'd give it a shot. Uh, and the most complex embroidery I've ever done has been on toast. 

[00:08:40] Katya Rucker: Really? In terms of the stitches, in terms of the--?

[00:08:44] Judith Klausner: Yeah. In terms of the stitches, in terms of the sort of realism, just the, the most - the things that turned out the best. [laughing]

[00:08:55] Katya Rucker: Each of these toast embroideries is extremely realistic looking, to the [00:09:00] point of being almost optical illusions. Judith says part of what made it so satisfying to embroider toast was how careful she needed to be, given how easy it would have been for the fragile piece of toast to fall apart every step of the way.

[00:09:14] Katya Rucker: Did you have to go through - I mean, the egg takes up such a huge amount of space on the toast. Like did you have to go through multiple pieces or were you--

[00:09:24] Judith Klausner: I got lucky. I actually didn't. I got that one on the first go. There were a couple of touch-and-go moments there. [00:09:30] Having to take out a stitch was like, oh, I held my breath. And it was just like, please don't, please don’t die. 

[00:09:35] Katya Rucker: Yeah, you're, you're threading the needle back through the, you know -- cause there are air pockets, right? But otherwise it's just, the crumbs can just fall and break it apart. 

[00:09:27] Judith Klausner: Yeah, and I recommend if you're ever going to be sewing anything into toast, don't wear a low-cut shirt because it really increases the itchiness problem.

[00:09:55] Katya Rucker: You can see pictures of Judith’s toast embroidery on the I'd Rather Be Podcast Instagram, [00:10:00] and you can see more of Judith’s fantastic art on her website, which is jgklausner.com. That's J-G-K-L-A-U-S-N-E-R dot com. The world's largest work of embroidery is basically a giant comic strip from the year 1070. It's almost 230 feet or 70 meters long and about a foot and a half high. It's called the Bayeux tapestry because it was found in the Bayeux cathedral in Northern France. Because most of the [00:10:30] public couldn't read in 1070, it does the job of explaining how the Normans conquered England in visual scenes, kind of like a graphic novel. So now that our minds have expanded to the wide world of things that can be embroidered, let's return to Caroline and hear what kinds of things she has embroidered so far.

[00:10:48] Caroline Matas: I found myself--once I kind of, um, had made too many hoop embroideries, and they were cluttering up our house and my fiancee was like, please stop hanging these up in our house-- [00:11:00] I started turning to things that were slightly more practical. So like I did a set of, um, embroidered Halloween-themed placemats. Um, I’ll embroider, um, you know, pieces of clothing that I have that I want to kind of revitalize, um, tea towels, and then I just do stuff for friends and force it upon them. 

[00:11:21] Katya Rucker: Have you embroidered - what's kind of the most unique thing you have embroidered a pattern onto or an image onto? 

[00:11:30] Caroline Matas: So my fiance was getting rid of, uh, this kind of trench coat thing she has. It's like, almost like an outback-looking, um, light brown kind of jacket. And I had this vision in my head, like I could embroider something onto this and like give it a new life, and I ended up going with a drawing of Steve Irwin [00:12:00] holding a Croc, like the shoe, um, which is, uh, like a drawing from an artist I like. And I was kind of like, this might be the right thing to breathe new life into this jacket. So I made a huge, I mean, probably like, I don't know, 10-inch long embroidery of Steve Irwin holding a Croc on this jacket. Um, that's probably the weirdest thing I've done.  

[00:12:27] Katya Rucker: It takes a very one-of-a-kind vision to [00:12:30] know that Steve Irwin holding a Croc, as in, the shoe, was just the thing this trench coat needed. But as Caroline pointed out to me several times over the course of our conversation, when you're just getting into a new hobby, you learn by copying others.

[00:12:44] So it was a pretty significant turning point for Caroline when she decided to venture out on her own. And this was when she created the piece that she's still most proud of to this day. 

[00:12:54] Caroline Matas: It took me a while to feel confident in kind of creating my own design, and [00:13:00] probably the piece I'm proudest of is the piece that I spent by far the most time on and that I created totally by myself. And it was a portrait of my mom's dog, um, who is a Collie. He looks just like Lassie. And he was kind of nearing the end of his life, um, he was still alive, but, um, you know, we kind of knew it was close to the end and something about spending, like, I don't know, [00:13:30] probably something near 40 hours, like many, many hours working on this piece.

[00:13:36] It felt like a tribute to him because the whole time I was thinking about him, I was thinking about like, all the different pieces that go into making him the dog that he was. Um, and so it just felt like a real labor of love in a different way than anything else I've done. Um, so this is a picture of him [00:14:00] with his portrait. 

[00:14:01] Katya Rucker: Teko right? 

In this picture that Caroline is showing me, Teko the collie is laying in the grass in kind of a Sphinx position. So you can see his whole face and Caroline's embroidery portrait is being held up next to his head. The effect created by the stitches really does look like a collie’s fur with long black, brown, and white stitches fanning out in all directions around his neck and framing his face. And his eyes are looking very fondly out into the distance with his small triangular ears pricked up. He almost looks like he's smiling. 

[00:14:30] Caroline Matas: And this was actually the last time I saw him. Um, so I was able to give this to my mom and let him sniff it and check it out. And, um, now it has a real place of honor in my mom's house, and something that makes it special compared to say a painting or a drawing is that it's, it's like a fabric piece that almost has a kind of 3D look and there's something about it that makes it feel like he's still kind of there. 

[00:14:59] Katya Rucker: You can [00:15:00] find the picture of the real Teko posing next to his completed portrait on the I'd Rather Be Podcast Instagram.

[00:15:06] So for anyone considering trying embroidery, Caroline has some good news. There's an extremely low barrier to entry.  

[00:15:14] Caroline Matas: It seems really impressive when someone has sewn anything onto anything. Um, but that just means that you can try it out and people will be impressed pretty much no matter what you create.

[00:15:26] So like, you know, people shouldn't be, people [00:15:30] shouldn't be scared off, um, just because they don't necessarily know what they're doing. It's like a really forgiving hobby. Um, as a, as a grad student, it's like, you know, it's a cheap hobby to do. Um, one of the cheaper ones I can really think of. And it means that you can give people really nice, thoughtful gifts without spending a lot of money or any money. 

[00:15:53] Katya Rucker: Okay. So let's talk through the basic steps involved all the way from selecting the right supplies to laying [00:16:00] down the very first stitch. Embroidery materials can be found at Michael's or most craft stores. And Caroline also suggested taking a peek on Etsy where artists offer starter kits or pattern kits that contain all the right colors of thread and the piece of fabric, usually with an outline of the drawing or design to be embroidered already on it. But let's dive into these specific materials in more detail. 

[00:16:21] Caroline Matas: So you need a hoop, which is just like a wooden or sometimes plastic circle. [00:16:30] And it's got kind of two concentric circles that fit with each other.

[00:16:35] Um, so the goal is basically that you can kind of tighten them together or loosen them and you put a piece of fabric between them. So it kind of cinches the fabric and pulls it taught so that you can embroider on it more easily. And I think it used to be that, you know, the hoops were just a material, um, they were just like the thing you use to pull the material taught so that you could [00:17:00] embroider onto something that would eventually become like a tea towel or a pillow case or whatever you were trying to put embroidery on.

[00:17:07] Um, now it's kind of in fashion to use it as a frame itself. So kind of finish off the back of the fabric and just leave it in the, in the hoop as it's framing, um, which is something that I do a decent amount of as well. And that makes it a little bit more of a standalone art piece rather than art on something else that's functional.

[00:17:29] [00:17:30] Um, but I do both kinds. So other than the hoop, really all you need to know to get into embroidery is how to thread a needle and put a needle through fabric. 

[00:17:45] Katya Rucker: It turns out there are hundreds of types of sewing needles out there, varying in thickness, pointiness, and in the size of the eye, which is the hole the thread needs to go through.

[00:17:55] Embroidery needles have very sharp tips and larger eyes than regular needles [00:18:00] since embroidery thread is thicker than most sewing thread. 

[00:18:03] Caroline Matas: Most embroidery thread is made up of six strands that you can separate from each other so that you can have, kind of, as thick or as fine a stitch as you want. 

[00:18:14] Katya Rucker: And, fun fact, embroidery thread is also known as embroidery floss.

[00:18:19] It comes in an oblong bundle called a skein, which is supposed to help you avoid getting the thread all tangled up. So once you have the hoop, some skeins of floss in the colors you like, and a few [00:18:30] embroidery needles, you're ready for step three, which is prepping your fabric for the design or image you're actually going to embroider.

[00:18:36] Caroline Matas: I typically will trace out when I want to draw, whether that's from -- so like, for the picture of my mom's dog, I traced a photograph first and then kind of like blocked out: here's where different colors are going to go. Here's where his eyes need to go. Um, I use, uh, a heat-disappearing ink, so you can just kind of blow a blow dryer on it or iron it to make the ink go away.

[00:18:59] Um, [00:19:00] which kind of makes it easier to sketch things out how you want, but yeah, you can like, if your fabric is see-through, you can kind of trace it on something, trace it on a light box or even on your computer screen with the light turned up, um, or, you know, sometimes I'll freehand, but I usually do draw it first. It's really hard to just kind of -- because the stitches themselves are so small, it's really hard to kind of keep the thread, so to speak, of like where you want the stitches to go without drawing it out first.  

[00:19:30] Katya Rucker: To the untrained eye, a stitch is kind of just a stitch. It looks like a tiny speck that you don't even really notice when you're looking at the completed embroidery piece as a whole. A sitch is kind of like a pixel on a computer screen. It's the basic unit of color that serves as the building block for whatever you're going to create. But unlike pixels, which are very uniform, there are over 300 types of stitches in embroidery. And I was curious about just how complicated some of these stitches are.

[00:20:00] When you started coming across all of these techniques, was there anything that you felt like, oh, that's the black belt of stitches? Like, I am not going to approach that yet. Like I have to start with the training wheels or, um, is every stitch accessible once you've been able to master some of the basics. 

[00:20:17] Caroline Matas: I was absolutely intimidated by the variety of stitches because I went into it with kind of the same thought of like, oh yeah, I mean, I just, you just put the needle through the fabric. Um, I was [00:20:30] surprised in practicing them how much of a difference it makes to use different types of stitches. Um, so there's like a stitch called a back stitch that you can use to kind of make straight lines. And it does actually look a lot more fluid than if you used a different type of stitch.

[00:20:47] And there's a stitch called a split stitch where you kind of bring the needle up through, um, several, you know, pieces of the thread and it gives it like a textured -- it gives your work a textured look. 

[00:21:00] Um, in terms of the black belt of stitches, I don't think there necessarily is one. Um, but I would say like, you can, you can tell kind of how good someone is at embroidery or how practiced they are, especially by their satin stitch, um, which is kind of like -- it's a longer stitch that's meant to give the look of kind of a uniform like coloring in, um, and they are just wickedly hard to [00:21:30] do well. And, it's one of those things where, you know, from the outside, if you've never attempted embroidery, you might not necessarily know that that's what the difference is that's making one piece look more professional than another, but a really good satin stitch is just like, to me, the, the goal. It's what I'm always trying for but haven’t yet achieved.

[00:21:50] Katya Rucker: The tutorial videos I found for satin stitches on YouTube all had well over half a million views. So it sounds like the vexation of the satin stitch is shared by many of [00:22:00] Caroline's fellow embroiderers.

[00:22:02] I had just one more question for her before trying a much more basic stitch out for myself. 

Are there any pitfalls of embroidery? Like you could poke yourself with a needle, like what's, do you have any words of caution? I couldn't think of anything super dangerous. It seems pretty tame, [laughing] but like, you know, you are working with a needle, I guess.

[00:22:21] Caroline Matas: it's a really high risk, intense hobby, famously. Um, no, I mean, I definitely accidentally prick [00:22:30] myself with a needle at least four times every time I do an embroidery, probably more than that. Um, but honestly the biggest risk to life and limb for me while doing this hobby is that I have two cats and they think that the string going back and forth, it's like a personal game just for them.

[00:22:49] Katya Rucker: Caroline’s cats have unrestricted access to every part of her house at all times. And this included her living room, where she began unpacking her box of embroidery [00:23:00] supplies to get me started.

[00:23:02] Caroline Matas: Let me find you a good needle. [rustling]

[00:23:07] My cats are circling around you because they know what all of these materials are. They know that string is about to appear.

[00:23:15] Katya Rucker: It's like they smell blood. 

And sure enough, just as my first stitch went into the fabric, this happened. [sounds of embroidery falling].

[00:23:26] It's okay. It's still threaded.

[00:23:27] Caroline Matas: Hey, will you [00:23:30] stop? You need to let go of that. You need to let go.

[00:23:32] Katya Rucker: Even though I had been warned, Comet the cat was just too experienced with the art of clawing an embroidery thread out of thin air for me to stand a chance. Caroline picked up a piece of yarn that was part of an actual cat toy to see if she could create a successful distraction.

[00:23:47] Caroline Matas: I feel like the key to both toddlers and cats is just like, give them a, you know, a child-friendly version of whatever thing they desperately want. Let them believe they've [00:24:00] gotten their way.

[00:24:00] Katya Rucker: Just as she draws out whatever image she plans to embroider, Caroline had me sketch my design onto the fabric, which was a side profile of a horse’s head looking to the left. It's one of the only things I know how to draw.  

[00:24:13] Caroline Matas: So looking at it, I would start by like, identifying what stitches you might want to use. So my thought would be you can do a basic back stitch as the outline. And that gives kind of the illusion of just like a pretty seamless line. So I'll show you how to do that. And [00:24:30] then for the nostril and the eye, I would recommend a French knot. 

[00:24:33] Katya Rucker: The back stitch is one of the most basic and easiest stitches. All you do is poke the needle up through your fabric where you want the end of the stitch to be, then put the needle back in where the previous stitch left off. 

[00:24:45] Caroline Matas: So you're basically kind of like drawing every segment backwards.

[00:24:49] Katya Rucker: The French knot is a bit harder. You have to spool the thread around the needle a few times, then pull it down into a knot to create a more defined point as opposed to a line. [00:25:00] [sound of stitch going through fabric].

[00:25:03] Caroline Matas: First stitch!

[00:25:03] Katya Rucker: First stitch, a back stitch. I continued to make my way along the outline of the horse head I had drawn, back stitch after back stitch, while Caroline worked on keeping the cats entertained. 

I see what you mean by meditative. You're just like watching-- 

[00:25:19] Caroline Matas: I know, it’s so good.

you're watching something emerge that wasn't there. And because it's thread, you're not like -- you're a little bit removed from it, if it makes sense? Like [00:25:30] you're not -- it's not your hand physically drawing the line. Like there's something separating it.

[00:25:38] Caroline Matas: it's like you're ushering the line into existence.

[00:25:40] Katya Rucker: Yeah. 

Ushering a line into existence. When Caroline put it this way, it made embroidery seem a little like magic. But I guess we can all find the magic in the things we love, especially if, as Liz Gilbert believes, the universe buried these passions -- these jewels -- within us all to [00:26:00] find for ourselves.

[00:26:06] I'd like to thank Caroline for sharing her love of embroidery here on the I'd Rather Be podcast, and professional artist Judith Klausner for taking the time to share the story behind her toast embroidery. I've been so encouraged by the positive feedback I've received from so many listeners on these first few episodes of I'd Rather Be, and I want to keep making the show better and better.

[00:26:29] [00:26:30] So if you have any specific questions or feedback you're willing to share, you can submit the contact form at idratherbepodcast.com. And if you're loving the show, here's my big ask. Write up a brief review on Apple Podcasts. An increasing number of ratings and reviews will help the show climb the charts and reach other potential listeners.

[00:26:52] I'd Rather Be was hosted, produced, and edited by me, Katya Rucker. Show notes for this episode can be found at idratherbepodcast.com. Have a great week, and thanks for listening.