Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

 I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people).

I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog (here).

I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me something to focus on rather than the craziness of the world. Being me, the first thing I thought to do was to do some research and see if this was something that other people had encountered, which led, eventually, to do this workshop!

So, a little bit on the history of embroidery in general. The first known embroidery (as in, sewing done purely for decorative purposes, rather than to strengthen seams or repair damage) has been dated back to 500 AD in Egypt. Around 1100 AD, we have the Bayeux Tapestry, a monstrous (around 230 foot long) embroidery illustrating the Norman Conquest of England, culminating in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD. Sometime between 1100 and 1492 AD, counted cross stitch (the kind of cross stitch that is commonly done today) was invented.

Around 1400 AD, we have the first English reference to blackwork embroidery in Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Blackwork was a type of embroidery that was and is commonly referred to as "Spanish work" because it's associated with Catherine of Aragon, but it predates her in England by at least 100 years. Finally, in 1524 AD, the first known counted cross stitch pattern book was published in England, which leads eventually to things like all the patterns you can find online today!

I've been throwing around a couple of types of embroidery, so let's do some definitions. Cross stitch is a type of embroidery made of (surprise!) crossed stitches, meaning there is a stitch going in one direction, following by a second stitch on top of the first going in the opposite direction. It's usually done on an even-weave fabric like Aida. "Even-weave" means that the threads of the fabric are evenly spaced, leaving a consistent grid of holes for the stitches to go into. Cross stitch pieces are usually done with just the one kind of stitch, though sometimes other stitches are added for detail (such as backstitching for outlines).

Blackwork embroidery is embroidery done with a single thread, usually forming geometric or floral patterns. It's historically been done with a single color (black or red, leading to "blackwork" or "redwork") on an even-weave fabric, and done with a single type of stitch. The pattern is usually symmetrical, and was frequently used as a decorative edging or border on clothing.

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Embroidery was used as a form of occupational therapy starting in World War I, when soldiers came back from the front unable to take up the jobs that they had had before the war due to what we now call PTSD. The Royal School of Needlework in the United Kingdom began a school in which they taught ex-servicemen how to embroider, giving them a sense of purpose and something upon which to focus, as well as something they could see as an accomplishment when they finished a piece. Through the Royal School, the wealthy of the UK and the church commissioned works made by the ex-servicemen, thus allowing them to provide money for their families. (This information, along with a lot of other great info about embroidery across history, can be found in Clare Hunter's book Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle. I highly recommend it.)

Between 2020 and 2022, researchers studied the effects of embroidery as art therapy for adolescent girls who had recently been hospitalized for mental and emotional health crises. The researchers discovered a few key aspects of embroidery that helped in the kind of art therapy being provided, specifically:

• Repetition
• Structure
• Simplicity
• Artistic Voice
• Sense of Value

Regarding the first three points, you can see these in the rhythm developed by the stitches worked in the same way every time, particularly with cross stitch and blackwork. This kind of rhythm can be very meditative and calming. Also, having the structure of working off of a given pattern can be useful in reducing anxiety by giving a plan of action. Finally, designs can be as simple or as complex as you want, allowing for some freedom in how much detail you want to go into.

On the last two points, the artistic voice can be found in the way a stitcher can choose whatever colors they want when doing a project. There's nothing saying that you have to follow a pattern exactly if you don't want to. Something that has appeared historically is that oppressed people frequently used embroidery as a way of saying things that, due to their status in society, they were unable to say outright - for example, women in prison in the 1800s were given embroidery to do to keep them calm and quiet, and they would use the opportunity to tell their stories or express their complaints about their situation. 

Finally, there's the sense of accomplishment. You finished a thing! You can look at something you've stitched, hold it in your hand, and see something that you've created. The way that I started working on blackwork embroidery was through the publisher Peppermint Purple, who was doing a stitch-a-long in 2020. Every week, she would provide a small square design for free. You could do the square by itself, or put them all together over the course of the year into one big project. The weekly designs were small enough that they could be done in just a couple of hours, and in the end, there was a completed thing. The hit of dopamine was exactly what I needed in 2020 to help move me along, and fortunately, the publisher has continued the stitch-a-longs every year.

From here, in the workshop, we went into the different kinds of materials used in cross stitch and blackwork, including passing around some samples of Aida and even-weave fabric and DMC and Anchor floss. After that, we did a practical demonstration of cross stitch and blackwork embroidery, using the patterns I included in the kits (and that are on the page I linked to above). Erin had this nifty projector camera that we set up to show our hands up close so the people could see what the stitches looked like clearly.

Overall, I really enjoyed giving this workshop, and I would happily do it again. Thank you, GeekGirlCon, for giving me the space to share what I learned!