Home is where you stitch

I've been in Denver for four years now. When I moved here, my husband-to-be came back from Afghanistan to drive me from Massachusetts to Denver. We weren't even engaged at the time. We took two weeks, not only to move (four days in the car) but to unpack and get oriented to the new city. I hadn't even seen my apartment before I arrived, although my things had arrived several days before me.

 

It was fun--almost like a vacation--except when Roger left, I was going to be alone in a new city far from anyone I knew. The day before he was scheduled to go, we checked out the cultural center. It is quite nice, offering plays, music, and art classes. I picked up a brochure and there it was--a class in Brazilian embroidery starting the very next day.

 

I immediately signed up. I had wanted to try Brazilian embroidery since high school when my parents gave me Rose Montague's Brazilian Three-Dimensional Embroidery, but I was intimidated by the stitches and didn't know where to find the thread. This class, I felt, would take the sting out of being so far from home and I would get to know some people.

 

During my first class, there were three students, me and two women in their 70s--but they were a riot. We worked basic stem stitches and bullions. That was fine, but the stitches didn't have the three dimensional look I craved. I finished that little kit so fast, that the instructor suggested that I try something more challenging.

 

Here it is, my second ever Brazilian embroidery project--a basket full of geraniums. I learned cast-ons, cast-ons with detached buttonhole and a fancy drizzle stitch. Immediately I was hooked. I've taken many classes with Christine since that first June evening and progressed to many more stitches, but this is the piece that hangs in my living room--my first true Brazilian embroidery, the piece that made Denver home.

 

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