I learned to embroider from my grandmother when I was a kid, but let it lie idle until the early 70's. It was a time when it seemed everyone was embroidering on jeans, shirts, and jean jackets. A girlfriend of mine was into it in a craftsy kinda way. She inspired me and so I picked up embroidering again with a vengenance.
			In 1973, instead of embroidering on every piece of clothing I had, I decided to put it all on one pair of hip-hugger extra-wide bellbottom jeans. The butt was wearing out and they were my favorite pair of jeans. I thought the embroidery would make them wear longer. Little did I know that the jeans would end up chronicling my adventures in embroidery for over 20 years.
			Here's a close-up of my beginning embroidery. Nothing fancy. The idea was to have a trail of flowers running up my leg and around my butt. I got burned out embroidering all the leaves down the side of the leg and so it remained unfinished.
			The summer of 1976, a very special time in my life: I was pleasantly unemployed, had free time, was divorced, and decided this little mama was gonna make a baby. This moth was my first project in learning how to blend colors that summer. Of course, I got burned out (embroidery can be extermely tedious and time-consuming) and the moth remains unfinished.
			1982 (and I'm living in California now), no one embroiders anymore. But I began to experiment with various stitches for textured effects. Flowers were good subjects.
			Here's a detailed pict of some of the stitches I used for this section of my jeans.
			In 1982, I also discovered there was an Embroider's Guild. Everyone did such fantastic work. I was in hog heaven, until . . . I got burned out. Like I said, very detailed work. But I discovered French silk embroidery thread in Sausalito and a whole new world opened up. Such vibrant colors. The texture was so different from cotton thread.
			Here's a detail of my work with silk. (My jeans haven't been washed since 1976, and with silk now added,they for sure won't be now.) Although silk is beautiful to work with, it breaks easily and you have to take special care. Okay, so maybe silk isn't the best thing for jeans.
			I knew John aka Stik aka Honey from Arkansas. When he moved to California in 1980, he told me to come out too. Three months later, I was there. He left his jean jacket with me before he left, and I began to embroider a little something for him. Working on jean jackets is the pits. Almost impossible for fine detail. It didn't occur to me to do the embroidery on a piece of material and then mount it on the jacket. No, I like to do things the hard way.
			I love the artwork of Roger Dean. I once went with very little food for one week in order to buy one of his books. I still have that book. I forget what the name of this particular piece was, but I thought it would be an impressive piece to have on the back of John's jacket. As is the case with embroidery and me, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, and this project remains . . . unfinished.
			When Sherah was little, I decided to do a piece for her. I chose Roger Dean's Osibisa because of how fanciful it is, I thought it would capture Sherah's imagination. This is actually one of my first finished pieces. Of course, it's not mounted yet and Sherah's 23, but hey, one of these days . . .
			Here's a detailed section of Osibisa. Because of the learning curve on embroidery for me, I found that I could see myself improve by the time that I finished this one. As a result, the left side is okay and the right side looks much better. Well, to me anyway.
			Okay, no more jean material, I move on to silk. This is another Roger Dean picture. I worked on this one for over a year. Of course, this piece is unfinished and you'll notice the charred areas. Yes, in one of my self-destructive moments, I set the thing on fire.
			Here's a detail of the piece. I really honed my embroidery skills on this one. I started using the direction of the thread to imply texture and give it dimension. Also, started learning how to place one color next to another for different effects (I had done this in painting before, but never thought to apply it to thread).
			In the 80's I discovered a book on sale, The Ten Bamboo Studio. It had Chinese prints that had made it to Japan and then had gone to England. I fell in love with the style. For two years, I worked on this three-piece project. Cotton thread on raw silk. I did research and by now I was using several types of embroidery frames instead of a hoop so that my fingers would touch the material/thread as little as possible. Here's is the first piece. I saved the red camillas for last as a reward for working with so much god-awful green.
			Here's a detail of the vase and red camilla. By this point, I'm working with a single thread and to blend I'm down to splitting threads. For such detailed work, I now have a lighted-magnifying glass mounted to my embroidery frames. Yes, where do you put your mind while hour after hour you toil away at this? That's the biggest problem I found and ultimately what determined that these three sections were going to be my final pieces of embroidery.
			I love the symbology of Chinese paintings. This piece was a refreshing change from the previous one. I saved the duck pot for a reward after finishing the camilla and vase since I knew it would be so much fun to create, and it was.
			Here's a detail of the duck. I just love it. It was a challenge to see if I could create a feathery effect around the duck's face.
			I saved this small piece of the trilogy for last. It was so much fun. I put a lot into each section of it. I had the feeling that I'd never do this again, and I wanted it to be good.
			Here you can see the detail of the basket. I experimented with various stitches to create just the right basket effect.
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