Embroidery Beginnings

Betsy here, taking over the blog this week! I noticed Marissa used a recent blog post to talk about where we found our love for vintage fabrics (thanks, Mom) and how she decided to use those fabrics for bloomers, so I figured I’d talk about how I got into the world of embroidery!
 
While it was Mom who force-fed us all things vintage and antique while growing up, my love for embroidery began with another awesome woman in our lives: our Memère (our grandmother – the term Memère is a remnant of our French-Canadian heritage). By the time Marissa and I came along – the youngest by far of her grandchildren – Memère was already retired and had plenty of time to dote on the kids in her life. We spent a ton of time at her apartment, soaked up her attention, and was showed off by her to the other grandmothers in the building (it was this odd competition of who had the most adorable grandchildren – I totally won, as you can see below).

​I don’t know how it began but, for whatever reason, one day Memère began to show me knitting. I still have a vivid recollection of her bouquet of needles sitting beside her recliner: her go-to activity when watching bowling on television. Maybe it was my fascination with those needles, my need to copy whatever the grown-ups were doing, or my genuine interest in hands-on crafts, but before long, she had shown me the basics and we were off to the races. Pretty soon, she introduced me to other forms of knitting. The picture below is her walking me through how to use some sort of circular knitting loom and, as you can see, it had my entire focus.

​I don’t quite remember when embroidery came into the picture – in all honesty, it may have been a combination of Memère and Mom who fed that particular hobby – but I can say with certainty that it was Memère who sparked my initial interest in hands-on textile crafting. Sure, I may use the skill to stitch sass and swears – something a grandparent may not approve of – but if you knew our Memère, you’d agree that she would have thought it hilarious.
 
It wasn’t until Marissa already had Whimsy and Fluff up and running that I returned to the craft. With her fabric scraps and my love of stabbing things repeatedly with a needle (lol), embroidery soon became a staple in the Whimsy and Fluff product line.
 
20 years later, I’m still copying our Memère: my own mass of needles sitting beside me, television on in the background, happily stitching away at my latest creation.