About

I believe that needlework of all kinds should have a place in today’s society and not be relegated to the sidelines. I want to contribute to preserving techniques that are almost lost, by researching them, trying them out and incorporating them into modern designs. What can we learn from our textile traditions? Why is it that important to preserve them? What resources can we draw on? Those are important questions for me personally and I’d like to explore them using this blog.

Creating things out of textile materials seems to be in my blood. My grandmother was a seamstress, and my mother created a lot of her own clothing herself when she was a young girl. It was natural to me to learn all the different kinds of needlework I could get my hands on: embroidery, crochet, macramee, bobbin lace. To my disappointment, I never managed to get the hang of knitting as a kid, since my tension always was too strong and by the third row I wasn’t able to insert a needle into the finished stitches anymore. But to my surprise, when I tried again a few years ago, those problems had disappeared, and knitting is actually quite easy now!

Whenever I learn about a kind of needlework I don’t know how to do, I have to try it. Figuring out the process of something new is half the fun for me. While I might never get back to something once I’ve tried it, more often I find a new love that will have to compete for time with all the other stuff I like to do, like discovering yet another field on the verge of being forgotten.

To make sure historical textile crafts aren’t completely forgotten, I will use this blog

• to write about great old and new books as well as the best needles from the ever-growing haystack that’s the internet,
• to share my discoveries from museums and exhibitions that show historical as well as modern textiles,
• to show how I use the techniques I learn about in my own projects,
• to provide tutorials for techniques where such information isn’t readily available elsewhere.

This blog enables me to present the results of my explorations immediately, and I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I do!

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