The process of learning embroidery has honestly surprised me. While I went into it hoping to find a new hobby, I didn’t necessarily have high hopes considering my previous experience with sewing and crocheting. I found those complicated and stressful, and didn’t have high expectations for embroidery because of that. However, I was pleasantly surprised with the way the process actually went. While it was difficult to do during flares, I would push myself to do small bits at a time because I found that it helped me to center myself. In classes I would embroider because it helps me focus to do something with me hands, and it helped comfort me through some uncomfortable conversations in some of our other classes.

By no means do I find that any of my focus came to how little progress I made over time in terms of how much of a project I could finish. After a year and a bit of feeling ineffective, it felt so good to have some physical representation of doing something. I found it easier than I might have thought to not compare my products to my peers, who produced much more volume than me. I was just able to really focus on what I was doing, and found that I truly felt calmer and more centered when I embroidered. I was able to watch lesson videos for classes, or watch a movie, and just get something done, which sometimes was the very most I could manage in a day.

The video below shows the process of about half an hour of embroidering, which I did while watching a Netflix show. It doesn’t seem like a lot of progress, but the fact that I did something on Sunday (the day I recorded this) was huge for me, because I got out of bed to record it on a day where I otherwise might have let my pain take over.

Music in this video is Time Alone by David Renda courtesy of Feliyan Studios royalty free music.