Triangle Scarves and Feminist Embroidery
I never really thought about embroidery as something that would be a fun and cool craft until I met Maria of Femmebroidery about a year ago at a ‘food group’ meet up (yup, it is what is sounds like – a bunch of girl and boys eating together). At first, I was a bit sceptical but then she showed me photos of her work and I was instantly hooked and NEEDED to learn how she does it. Luckily Greater Goods – a local boutique, tea shop and maker space – offered one of her workshops and I signed up.
At first, Maria told us a little bit about herself and her art. Now, if you’re like me, you might think that embroidery is something your grandma or suppressed Victorian ladies would engage in but that’s not Maria’s style. She creates feminist embroidery art not only as an creative outlet for herself but also to raise awareness on important issues like gender, race and class inequality and change the world one hoop at a time. I just love the contradiction in her work: sweet florals juxtaposed with ‘Smash the Patriarchy’-statements stitched in beautiful cursive letters. It fits right in with my aesthetics and beliefs. My accesories and style might be cute, fun and adorable but I’m not a sweet little girl and social injustice and how to change it has always been a hot topic for me.
Maria taught us a bunch of basic stitches, how to transfer a design to the fabric and how to put your fabric into the hoop. She even brought a couple of different patterns that we could choose from to make our first real piece of embroidery. And then we got to choose from the pretty colourful flosses. Oh, I just want to use them all!
But while I was stitching until my fingers bled (well, maybe not bled but they did hurt after a couple of hours!), I had another idea. Wouldn’t a collaboration (you all know how much I love collaborations!) be a fun thing to do? And wouldn’t a feminist embroidery be the perfect addition to my Triangle Scarves? Luckily, Maria loved the idea just as much as I did and after meeting up a couple of times – it was a bit difficult to stay focussed on the task at hand and not get caught up in political discussions, especially since Trump had just been elected – we decided on two designs:
- Solid colours with pretty florals.
- And lovely floral fabrics with the female symbol to represent feminism.
Just look at all those pretties! Isn’t Maria’s needlework just amazing? Even the prototype one that we made while experimenting with ideas was so perfect, I just kept it for myself. I especially like how the fabric covered buttons and the floral feminist embroidery stand out against the solid coloured background.
What do you think? Are you as excited as we are? Which design to you like best? We only made a limited edition of 20 scarves and already sold almost half of them at markets in the past couple of weeks. If you love one of these (I think they would look so cute in someone’s Easter basket!) or would like to see the other colours, just send me an email to mapleandoakdesigns@hotmail.com – they’re 50$ CAD, just like my other Triangle Scarves.
With love from the Maple And Oak Diaries,
? Leonie?
