The art of embroidering the world’s beauty

I wish I could spend more time embroidering than procrastinating

My cloth with some types of stitches and techniques

In Portugal, the summer school holidays are three months long. Our parents keep working, and they have to get us something to do. My mom, since we had financial difficulties, sometimes asked a cousin of hers to let me be there, and she could teach me sewing. I started to learn simple things like stitching the buttons and making their “house” into the fabric. At that time, I wasn’t so eager to learn that — I wish I had since today I could use those techniques to seam my clothes.

Well, after some classes, we have one that makes us do artistic objects. From clay to paper or textiles. You chose a project and spend the class doing your art. That’s when I started with cross-stitch. I don’t have the rose that I had done in that class, but the passion has begun. I have a bad habit of leaving things unfinished, and my cross stitch suffers from it.

I’ve learned the cross-stitch with a woman that was a friend of my mother, her nickname is Todinha, and she is a buyer/seller of gold and silver jewelry. Not only that, but I love silver objects because of all the amazing jewelry that I was used to seeing since little when I would go into the store when the grownups were talking.

So, one of those summer holidays, I’ve stayed with her, and she has taught me how to do all the techniques to make a small garden bench with flower ports beside it on the ground. I still remember the green color of the bench, the little simple flowers with all the colors that I had on those threads. I do not paint well, nor draw. Hence, seeing something so perfect coming out of my fingers was magic for me and my passion was born.

Patience is a must if you want to make great art from that cross stitch. You have to check the pattern that you want to do and simply follow all the rules to get your finished art. I use some of my tablecloths in my room, I like to have a meaning in everything that I decorate.

My mother didn’t have much finance to give me all that I wanted — something that the kids today don’t know — and that was a blessing. Any gift or moment that we had in common was special: no gift in the world is better than the time you spent with your kids…