I have many memories of my childhood, I can sort of replay them in my head if I want to, like an abstract film, a collection of disjointed but related clips that have an overall pleasant appeal, mainly because I had a happy childhood.
One memory that I remember is of my mother teaching me various embroidery stitches. Now, I have no context, don't remember how old I was or why we were doing it, was it her whim or mine? No idea. The only thing I remember is attempting the chain stitch with a brown thread on a baby pink piece of satin. Funny how sometimes the intricacies of events are often etched in our brain, and so much else just vanishes, forgotten.
Another fact about me is that I like to keep my fingers busy. So, I have always gravitated towards art, craft, DIY and the like (these days they looove scrolling). As a kid I could keep myself happily occupied with my various projects but I have grown up to be a perfectionist of sorts. I don't regret it, I don't know if I can regret it (is it in my hands? can I control it? help!). AND on top of that, I have high expectations, from both myself and others. I am trying to rationalise the latter as that only leads to disappointment but I don't see anything wrong in having high expectations from myself, it's one of the only things that make me stop procrastinating, because guess what, I am a procrastinator too 😂.
Now, I am also pretty creative and mostly have great ideas. However, I am a little challenged when it comes to executing them, in plain words, I am not the best at drawing, painting and the like. It's not like I'm pathetic, but I often struggle to achieve what I have in mind, and it is here that being a perfectionist and having high expectations don't really prove to be my best friends. I have blamed my failure on paintbrushes, paints, paper, everything and even used this as an excuse to splurge my parents' hard earned money on expensive materials but, I have now come to terms with the fact that I cannot be THE BEST at everything. It still pinches me at times, but mostly I have made peace with it.
Okay, so coming to the crux of this post, after my very final school exams result in 2018, I had again picked up a needle and thread, fitted a stray piece of cloth in my embroidery hoop and had gotten to work. What drove me to do this, no idea, but I did it and created a tiny, but wholly original piece which managed to captured all my feelings at the time perfectly. I had scored well, everything else was chill, life was good! And hmmm I wasn't unhappy with my creation, rather quite pleased and satisfied?! Seems like I was getting somewhere!?
LOL! The next time I picked up my tools was a year later. Quite a long hiatus considering that had I thoroughly enjoyed it the previous time. But hey, life happens. This time I made a very simplistic piece which was inspired by a post on Pinterest and my visit to Petersham Nurseries in London. Again, it turned out pretty well BUT while I was applying fabric glue at the back to secure the threads in place, I did not do it properly and sadly, it seeped through the cloth and refused to come out despite washing it several times. I was quite devastated but the flowers were quite safe from the mess, so I cut them out to stick them in my art journal or to make pins out of them. Till this day, if you are lucky, you might find them in my room- lonely, forgotten and drifting around aimlessly. :|
