Although I love most things to do with needle and thread (except for cross stitch – I am simply too disorganised and scatty to make and count all those tiny identical stitches, beautiful though the results can be) my first love is hand embroidery, having made my first stitches at my mother’s knee more years ago than I care to admit to! And so I’m always especially delighted when we feature hand stitchers in the Bustle & Sew Magazine.
In the current issue we spoke to Sarah K Benning, an independent maker living and working in upstate New York (soon to relocate to the Balearic Islands, where I was on holiday the week before last!). She graduated with a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and has been working on growing her business ever since.
Sarah describes what she does as “Contemporary Embroidery” and I can totally understand why looking at the crisp clean lines of her work, that’s so inline with the current trend for mid century botanicals and terrariums. She told us that she tends to think of her work more in terms of illustration than traditional embroidery, trying to create designs that are playful, modern and always well-crafted.
I love her work and spent some happy moments counting up the different shades of green in a particular hoop, as well as trying to work out how she makes her satin stitch quite so perfect and smooth – ALL of the time!
If you’d like to see more of Sarah’s work then please do pop over to her Etsy shop, keep up to date with all her news over on her Facebook page and enjoy more of her beautiful work on Instagram.
Thanks Sarah, for being a part of the October Bustle & Sew Magazine.
I absolutely love hand embroidery, my first love too. The first stitch I ever learnt was a French-knot. I was a bout five when I learnt it, one of the most difficult stitches to get right I have since learnt!
Julie xxxxxx
Wow! That was a hard stitch to begin with – I started with running stitch, then I think cross stitch was next. Took me ages to master French knots, though now I love them.