Indian Embroidery

In January I stared taking an Indian Embroidery class at the Erie Art museum. You might be thinking, "wait. WHAT!? The art museum has classes?!" Well, the answer is yes, and you should look into them. Anyway, I was at work, looking over the quarterly reports from the VISTA before me and discovered that the art museum offered classes (and scholarships!) and promptly signed up.

Now, to be honest, Indian Embroidery was not my first choice and my thoughts after the first class were, "what the hell am I doing here? I can't do this. I just wanted to have a painting class." However, after I practiced at home with my tiny hooked needle and successfully made a few rows of chain stich, I started to get into this new style of art. But it still took some time getting used to, since, as an amature painter, my brain needs to have things in picture form and Indian Embroidery is not exactly meant for that: it is used for embellishments.

My teacher, Pooja, was extremely patient with me and the other three women in the class; showing is the different stiches over and over again. Of course, we didn't feel like we were achieving much since Pooja is a professional designer in India, and her work is amazingly beautiful, but her encouragement and praise when we were able to do a stich properly made us feel good about ourselves. And as the class went on, I found myself becoming almost obsessed with doing my practice at home, so that I would be better when the next class came around. So much so that Jeremy would have to actively ask me to do other things (Sorry, Jer. I can be a little one-track minded sometimes).

In the end I ended up loving the class, admiring my teacher and learning a new art form that I truly enjoy. Before the class ended I was able to finish one small project and I entered it into the "First Class" show at the Erie Art Museum, and on Saturday I just finished my large "practice piece" project, which became a mixture of what I learned from Pooja and what my brain wants to form. The art museum will be having their 88th annual spring art show and I am going to try my luck and see if I can get my piece into it. Cross your fingers and hold your thumbs!