Pretty Pillowcases

I was introduced to a friend of a friend the other day and was asked what I did. As a lady of a certain age, I am rarely asked that any more because a lot of my contemporaries are retired or thinking hard about retiring. I am among the first wave of Baby Boomers, born in the year after WWII (which pretty much pinpoints my age no matter how coy I am about it). So this woman asked me what I did and I replied that I was an embroiderer. She looked at blankly for a minute and then said, "You do those pretty pillowcases?"

As a matter of fact, I have done pretty pillowcases in my life. I have not done anything that useful recently, but I have done pillowcases and dishtowels. Even now I occasionally receive hand-embroidered dish towels from my older sister and pillowcases from my good friend Carole. There are very few gifts I love more than those things.

St. Columba's Wreath

Something pretty, not a pillowcase;

oil pastel and acrylic paint on silk with silk and cotton threads

This woman whose name I have forgotten went on to say that she herself did not do embroidery, but she did do counted-cross stitch and a long time ago she did some needlepoint. So I started my normal about lecture about embroidery, counted-cross and needlepoint. I am pretty sure her eyes glazed in the first twenty seconds of this. Embroidery is the huge mother-category. Both needlepoint and counted-cross stitch are types of embroidery. In fact under embroidery are a bunch of categories of major techniques and both NP and C-CS fall under the major technique called counted work. Okay, now I see your eyes glazing.

Then this woman, a friend of a friend, asked me how I knew all this. This is an excellent question and easy to answer: because I have devoted more than half my life to the study and art of embroidery. Because I made it my life's work to be able to answer questions like how the various types of embroidery are categorized. Because someone has to know these things and to pass that knowledge on.

Unfortunately in this country it is impossible (or was the last time I checked) to get a college degree in embroidery. In France and England it is possible to go to certain schools to learn about the art and craft of embroidery. Here embroiderers have to be mostly self-taught. Fortunately there are the big national guilds, groups of like-minded people who come to together to foster just such studies. The Embroiderers' Guild of America is the one I belong to, but one can find The American Needlepoint Guild, The Smocking Guild, The Sewing Guild, weaving and spinning guilds, and several others. All of these offer study in their particular fields. Now a person in the US can study in City and Guilds, an English- and Canadian-based program for embroidery, so there are many choices. A person who has gone through City and Guilds or a person who has gone through all the stages offered by EGA and ANG has the equivalent of a BA or even an MA in embroidery. Serious stuff.

So when this woman asked me if I did those pretty pillowcases, I could say yes because I have a national teacher's certification in counted work from EGA that took almost two years of testing for me to achieve. I earned a Mastercraftsman Award in Color Theory from EGA that took two and a half years, a test with six major questions. And I have a Graduate Teacher's certification from EGA that took me five years to attain. There are only nine Graduate Teachers in all of EGA--I am the last one to so certify. In short I am a master of embroidery. I worked very hard to be that and I am very proud of it.

I haven't got time to retire or time to rest up. I have a world to teach about embroidery, its history, its place in history, its scope, and its art. And I have to get busy and stitch up something pretty even if it is not a pillowcase.