I first fea­tured Hillery Rebeka Sproatt’s work less than a month after I launched Brown Paper Bag. At that time, I fea­tured prints by Hillery. While I still really enjoy them (I bought one for my brother a cou­ple of years ago), I am now look­ing more towards her objects and embroi­dered pieces, specif­i­cally, her ...

Waaayyy back in Brown Paper Bag’s infancy, (seri­ously, I think this was one of the first entries I ever wrote!) I posted the work of Jazmín Berakha. When I wrote about her work, I was in awe of the stitch­ing and meti­ci­u­lous­ness of the details. And, I still am. Prob­a­bly even more so! As some­one ...

I often find the printed pat­terns depict­ing the 18th cen­tury kind of a snore. Their idyl­lic scenes just don’t cap­ture my inter­est. But, this all changes with the work of Richard Saja! His embroi­dery of the taboos of the time (includ­ing a con­di­tion of exces­sive hair growth) are very enter­tain­ing, espe­cially when you con­sider how ...

I know I tweeted about this yes­ter­day, but I wanted to share this on the blog because it made my day! These Pen­guin book cov­ers, as sewn by Jil­lian Tamaki. Work­ing on my own sewing project, these cov­ers are great inspi­ra­tion. So beau­ti­ful and refined, I am entranced by the metic­u­lous­ness and neat­ness of Jillian’s ...

I am very excited to share the lat­est install­ment of Art Together, a col­lab­o­ra­tive inter­view. It works like this: I cre­ate a piece of work and then mail it to the par­tic­i­pat­ing artist. They, in turn, respond to it some how– this could be: adding, sub­tract­ing, cut­ting, past­ing, paint­ing. What­ever they see fit to what ...

As a “reward” for fin­ish­ing all my grad­u­ate school appli­ca­tions, I started a mini quilt. I’m not so inter­ested in piec­ing together fab­ric, but more so in hand quilt­ing and embroi­dery. The past cou­ple days I’ve spent learn­ing new stitches and it has been really fun! As a result, I’ve been a lot more aware ...

Waaayy back when I first started Brown Paper Bag, I dis­cov­ered (and wrote about!) the work of Lorena, aka Spinthread. I found myself look­ing through her Etsy store and want­ing all of her pieces. I ordered this lit­tle number: Yes­ter­day I wore it and received many com­pli­ments on it. I was look­ing back over her ...

I think I’ve men­tioned before about my excite­ment to learn to quilt, and all things with nee­dle (exclud­ing drugs). My stitch­ing prowess tends to be fairly crude. That adds to my envy of Renilde Depeuter’s embroi­dery. Her newly-photographed pin­cush­ions series is titled “Metrop­o­lis”, and is impec­ca­bly stitched on burlap. In addi­tion to embroi­dery, Renilde also ...

I love look­ing at quilts. I’m not as attracted to coun­try quilts, but rather antique quilts that tell a story or help reveal some­thing about his­tory. The folk embroi­dered quilts from North West India have a beau­ti­ful appli­ca­tion of color and stitch­ing, and rich his­tory to go along with each piece. These quilts are avail­able on ...

I am absoul­tely in love with how UK-based artist Mau­r­izio Anz­eri has main­u­plated found pho­tographs and embroidery. Mau­r­izio uses embroi­dery like a shroud over mem­o­ries, breath­ing in new life and a renewed sense of color to old, sepia-toned pho­tographs. He works both with and against these found images. Some­times, he will use the con­tours of ...