Botanical Embroidery: A Book Writing Journey
Last summer (2020) I got an email titled, “Book Proposal” and my eyes passed right over it.
I receive a lot of emails with all kinds of “proposals” and “invitations” but they’re almost always some sort of spam or a company asking me to promote their new vacuum and in exchange I’ll get a coupon.
Email unopened, I continued with my day. Mostly working, intertangled with coffee and a board game with my husband and existential staring into the distance with an audiobook blaring in my headphones…you remember how the pandemic summer went.
I picked up my phone and mindlessly checked my email again. “Book Proposal”.
Upon opening the email, I found that it was very much in fact, a real book proposal from a real-life publishing house. I shoved my phone into my husband’s hands, and he looked up at me. “Wait…what??”
“Wait, what?” indeed.
The next 8 months involved me becoming a full-time craft book author. I embroidered and sketched and wrote until I was fully saying goodbye to my fingers and hands each night, knowing they would fall off any day now. When that was over, I photographed and edited until my blue-light glasses were basically fused to my skull.
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Well, actually I’d change nearly everything but hey, I’ve never written, stitched, and photographed an entire 192 page book before so there are some things I’d do a little differently if I ever did it again. Mainly, I’d be more organized.
Nevertheless, I wouldn’t change anything about the book itself. I’m SO excited for you to hold it in your hands. It’s filled with step-by-step photos, color guides, stories, and lots of florals and foliage.
By time you stitch your way through the book, you’ll have an entire garden gallery of pieces. Hand-stitched embroideries make lovely gifts, or adornments for your shelves and walls.
In this funny way art has, they’ll become time capsules of your mind. I can look at a piece I’ve done two years ago, and I know exactly what kind of music I was listening to or what movie I was watching or simply what was on my mind when I stitched it.
I like to hang them up in sacred places in my home when I’m finished, and I hope you will too.
Oh, and it’s available for pre-order, which leaves me back where I started.
“Wait…what??”
Cheers,
Maggie