Embroidery is wonderful in that a simple repertoire of stitches can produce endless designs but they can also make it make selecting a new design overwhelming. With an infinite number of wonderful beautiful patterns available at your fingertips, how are you supposed to choose just one for your next project? Some of you may be organized enough to have a queue of artists whose patterns you want to produce for yourself. I am not that disciplined. With every new project comes the terrible task of winnowing down the possibilities until I select my new design. I have learned to make this process easier on myself by looking for ways to make each new embroidery project very personal to me. Here are three embroidery motifs that are extremely easy to personalize:

1. Stars: This is first because it is the subject of my current project. Also space and stars are just awesome and great for embroidering on dark fabric. For this particular project I wanted a star map, but not just any star map. I found a website that shows the night sky at any time and place you enter. I input a significant date time and place in my life, printed it out and transferred it onto my fabric. You also search for a favorite constellation or astrological arrangement of planets.
2. Flowers: Flowers are great on their own, or with the myriad symbolic meanings attached to them. You can do some research into Victorian flower language to send secret messages with your designs. You can use flowers associated with your birth month or the place where you are from or currently living. Or, you can simply choose flowers that are special to you. Choose your flowers that grow at your favorite time of year or flowers that grow in your favorite place. One other benefit of choosing flowers is that it is easy to find patterns of nearly every type of flower in nearly every style from highly stylized to extremely realistic.
3. Quotations: Embroidering quotations is a way of keeping those words that speak to you so deeply, but that you still do not want tattooed on your body, close by. There is still a lot of poking involved, but when you decide that maybe that the words that spoke to you so deeply five or 10 years ago do not really hold any bearing on who you are now, you can simply take them off the wall. No need to explain how much they meant to you at the time for the rest of your life. Embroidering text is also a great way to experiment with new stitches and fonts. For those looking to create and sell patterns, the public domain is full of wonderful quotations to use.

-Erica

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