Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Behind the Scenes Minis: Embroidery Love Letter About this episode Holly talks about the various inspirations for her love of embroidery. Tracy shares her experiences with movies and her cat while embroidering.
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2:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:15 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and happy Friday. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We had a cozy week of embroidery talk. We did. So I kinda need right now.
2:27 Tracy V. Wilson? I love embroidery.
2:33 Tracy V. Wilson? I have a very, I have very distinct memories of various embroidery points in my life. I remember the first time I tried it and why. It hearkens back to that thing that I talked about with the koalas, where I saw a project in one of my mom's sewing magazines. And I was like, I want to do that. And it was a quilt that was made that had, it used gingham fabric in it. And the gingham was used as the grid basis for kind of a very loose style of cross stitch. And I was like, I want to do that. And I did some of those and they were very fun. You've done beaded embroidery before, right? You did a costume piece. Yeah. Most of what I've done has been cross stitch.
3:17 Tracy V. Wilson? But then I did do some costumes that had, like, I wasn't using the gridded embroidery fabric. But like, I, I did a bunch of bead work with embroidery onto ribbon as part of a costume. And pretty much that was just like me copying as best as I could something that had been in a movie. So I did not learn any like actual stitch techniques beyond what I learned as part of cross stitching. Like I learned to cross stitch. There are some other embroidery stitches that are sometimes used as part of a cross stitch pattern. Yeah.
4:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Like I remember doing a cross stitch pattern that had a border around the edge that was a different non-cross embroidery stitch. Right. Like a satin stitch or something? Yeah. Yeah. And so that, like, that's what I am most familiar with than my, this kind of free form attempts to copy something that was on screen. I have, oh, I guess it is two. I have two embroidery projects that are attempts to copy things that appeared on screen. One of which I devoted so much time and energy to and even traveled for, which is the best costume of all time in my heart. Mm hmm.
4:45 Tracy V. Wilson? Princess Leia's Bespin outfit, like the rust and, and I'm so in love with that thing. And when it appeared, gosh, that would have been 24 years ago, I think. It was on tour as part of the Smithsonian's costume stuff. They'll do like the Star Wars, they did for a while, the Magic of Myth one that toured around. I feel like right now the Bespin dress is touring only in Europe and not here. I'm not sure where, or maybe it's not on, on tour at all right now, but I love it. And I literally, we went when it was in Houston, because that was as close as it was coming. And we drove over to Houston because we were too poor for plane tickets then. Yeah.
5:24 Tracy V. Wilson? We literally, I sat in front of that dress in the museum display for two solid days, about eight hours a day, trying to recreate the pattern and take notes on all of the stitching. And then I did a version of that costume. Incidentally, if you've ever downloaded a hand drawn copy of that pattern from the internet, it was probably mine. It got passed around a lot of costume sites after that because I uploaded it and I did that one. And then I did some for an Amidala gown in the, the nineties and early 2000s. But where I really fell in love with embroidery, I remember very distinctly, like at a level I had not ever before in my life.
6:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Was in, I think it was 2008 in Chicago. There was an exhibit of dragon robes, other Chinese embroidery, and I lost my mind. Yeah. Like it just was like, I mean, I've certainly grown up around crafty people and I had seen lots of embroidery, but that was like a level and a style of design I had never really seen up close before. Yeah. Pictures never do it justice, even beautiful pictures like are not the same as when you are standing there and you can see the light glinting off the silk threads in a very specific way. It's so beautiful and it made me absolutely crazy for embroidery. When I worked as a library acquisition specialist for about a decade.
6:53 Tracy V. Wilson? At the end of the year, when you have budget left, use it on things that are not necessarily like curriculum development stuff. It's just collection development. Yeah. And I would always try to sneak some good Chinese embroidery history books in there. That school that I used to work for has a really good resource. Yeah. Which is funny to me, but I love it so much. Yeah, I, um, when I learned to cross stitch, I was a kid. And I had seen beautiful embroidery pieces. And I was not a patient child in any way.
7:33 Tracy V. Wilson? And the idea of what I saw in like the embroidery pieces that were not cross stitched that I saw just absolutely overwhelmed me in terms of even thinking about what would be involved to create something like that. Yeah. So it was like cross stitch was as far as I could.
7:52 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I don't know that I would describe myself as a patient person, but I am certainly capable of hyper focus. Yeah, yeah. Where I'm just like, by the way. When I was making those costumes, I spent a lot of time on them. I also spent a lot of time on them, watching every commentary that was released for the Lord of the Rings movies. Yeah. And at that point, like I had seen the movies so many times, I knew them basically by heart. So it was more like I was listening to the commentary while I was doing it. Yeah. I also, at that time, had a cat named Anastasia. And Anastasia wanted to get into my lap while I was trying to do this.
8:34 Tracy V. Wilson? And I would be like, no, baby, you can't get on my, I have this on, you cannot also. And she would get on the couch and she would like, kind of crouch down and she would slowly inch one paw forward and then the other paw. Like if I do this slow enough, she won't notice that I'm getting on her lap. She won't realize I am just on the lap. Yeah.
9:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Kitty smarts. I have great memories of when I did that Bespinlaya embroidery for a couple of different reasons. One is that I was, I started a little too late for the thing that I wanted to have it ready for, which meant that I was spending long hours. Like I would embroider until like three in the morning and I watched so much Dragon Ball Z because that's what was running on Cartoon Network at those hours. I got all my Super Saiyan time in, but also my boss at the time, who was a very cool and kind boss, started doing like embroidery blockouts for my time to make sure I had time to work on it. So it would be like after three, if nobody has anything pressing, just sit at your desk and do embroidery. Yeah.
9:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Which was the coolest. Everybody needs it. I have such great memories of that.
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13:28 Tracy V. Wilson? I also will say that while I was researching this, since then, I have gotten served all of the ads for every embroidery, everything on the internet. And I don't mind that at all. It's fine by me. Yeah. One of the things that we did not talk about much in this episode is the rise in various parts of Europe, but especially in England, I think Spain had some as well, of embroidery schools, I want to say in the 1760s, because there was all of a sudden this huge rash of schools that popped up with the intent that they would set up these schools in areas that had a lot of blue collar families so that their daughters could learn a trade. Okay. And most of them, some of them still exist, they have evolved over time in their
14:13 Tracy V. Wilson? mission where they're now like a more generalized education resource. But it was kind of fascinating, but there's not much to say of it other than that. Like, yeah. Yes, this gave some girls a skill that they might not have otherwise learned. Yeah. You know, like an early vocation school. And now embroidery is sometimes taught in schools as part of other things like HOMAC, but not a lot. No. I know there is a lot of concern that a lot of embroidery is, embroidery education has gone away. So there are people that really love it as an art that are concerned about its future, which is why the embroiderers guilds are so important. Yeah. I'm pretty sure my, I had things that my mom taught me, but some of it was either
14:54 Tracy V. Wilson? through the 4H Club or the Agricultural Extension Service. And the place where I grew up would have classes that cost some small amount of money that basically covered your supplies and stuff. And that's where I learned to do a lot of different craft type things. Yeah. Yeah, my mom did not teach me embroidery. She was a really skilled stitcher. Yeah. But she did not get into the needlework stuff. But so mom taught me mostly sewing. And now that I'm really thinking about it, I'm like, did anyone actually teach me to cross stitch? Or did I just teach myself that? I am not sure. My dad's sister cross stitched a lot.
15:38 Tracy V. Wilson? She may have given me some tips, but man, I don't really remember now.
15:44 Tracy V. Wilson? I had a very funny moment once where I was working for a company. And it was such a lovely reference to it that was unexpected, but we were in like a company meeting where a variety of people were being recognized for their contributions. And one of the VPs that was giving these out started talking about embroidery as a a way to talk about this one person's work. And it was such a beautiful way to use discussion of it where she was saying, one of the things you learn about if you study embroidery, if you know an embroiderer, is that the true mark of quality is that the backside of it is as pretty as the front side. And she was saying, and this person's like work on the back end of our technical stuff is just as good and perfect as anything that would be forward facing to users.
16:28 Tracy V. Wilson? And I was like, oh, that's a beautiful analogy to bring embroidery in. To close out, I have what I find to be embroidery comedy. Okay. Which is.
16:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Once again, we got to talk about the Bayou Tapestry some more. I feel like it's been very frequent in our discussions lately. And I am still figuring out when I'm gonna get to see the, see it while it's in London. But the great thing is that if you listen, if anybody listened to the episode that Sarah and Dublina did about the Bayou Tapestry, you know that there is a copy of it that was made that's in Kensington.
17:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Which is interesting in and of itself because you can't really like one to one duplicate something like that, especially because a lot of it does look like it was freehand embroidered. But it's a very good copy, but with one of the funniest pieces of editing to me ever. Yeah. If you've ever looked closely at the Bayou Tapestry, there are some people on it that have no pants on. We talked about that a little bit in an unearthed one time. Right. But on the Kensington copy, they made the editorial decision to add pants to those people. Okay. Funny.
17:46 Tracy V. Wilson? If I remember correctly, because this is a couple of unearthed ago, we talked about a paper where someone had researched the penises that are depicted. Yeah. And a lot of those were on horses, but it also looked like over the years, there had been some like scaling back of them in, in like repair and restoration work. Yeah, that big 18th century restoration might have included some of that. Yeah. Which is also interesting because that is the stuff that faded the most. So it would make that kind of study a little bit tricky in some ways. Yeah, yeah. Like, is this an editing or is this a repair that just didn't go quite right? In terms of having longevity?
18:30 Tracy V. Wilson? And I haven't read that paper, so I don't know, but it's very funny. Yeah. We gotta put pants on these people. Yeah. I love the Bayou Tapestry pants off, dance off. I think that's the best part. It's funny. Some guys with no pants carrying dogs. Yeah. I don't know why. I think that's great. I'm very excited to hopefully see it in person in the coming year. I'll get all weird about it and it'll be great. And it's a great excuse to visit London, which is a city I also love. Yeah. I have never been there. You haven't? Oh, man. I love it. I love it. Yeah, it's just, it's a beautiful, fun place and there's lots of yummy food. I know there's a big thing going on right now in terms of pubs
19:13 Tracy V. Wilson? and some new regulations that they're worried are gonna endanger the way that pubs operate. Wow. So I'll be curious how that all goes. And hopefully it'll, pubs will endure because I love a good pub meal. Delicious. Look out London, I'm coming and I'm gonna eat all the bangers and mash. Because that's my favorite meal in the world. If I'm ever on death row, that's what I'm picking. And I will do it. I'll eat it while I do embroidery of people who may or may not be wearing pants. Yeah. I just think it's funny. If you have time coming up this weekend that you are off, free time to yourself, the dream. And you like to do embroidery. Maybe it's a great time. I'm definitely going to be doing more embroidery this year because of this. It like reignited some things. I also,
19:58 Tracy V. Wilson? one of the reasons that I was able to do this episode, I mentioned that we had some time off, but also I have been very slowly, it's taking me more than a year to reorg my sewing room. And at one point, I had several books that I had opened and stuck on a shelf that had fabric on it and without even realizing it, I had stacked fabric on top of the books. And I've been like, where are those books? I don't know. And when I cleared everything off of those shelves, I was like, here are those books, ding dong. So I rediscovered them, which made it great and easier for me to work on this. And now I'm like, I need to get back to this this year. Yeah. As a fun way to make delight in my life. Listen, there are going to be some rodents
20:39 Tracy V. Wilson? embroidered in my house, maybe some kitties. I'm still thinking about that Egyptian cat tattoo. That's a little very simple embroidery piece. I'm into all of it. It's going to be an embroidery year. I'll be doing that in my free time, some of the time, but to go back, if this isn't time that you have off this weekend, I still hope that you get some time to do whatever it is that nurtures your soul and makes you feel good about yourself, even if that's sitting on your couch. That's a perfectly acceptable way to spend quiet time. Or not quiet time, if you're watching TV cranked. I don't care. Just whatever makes you happy, we need it. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and then on Monday, we'll have something brand new.
21:25 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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