Growing up, Reilly Case would watch her grandmother work fabric and thread like water through her hands. Inspired by her grandmother’s hands delicately manipulating the fabric like magic, she taught herself how to hand embroider little hoops of sunshine and delight – pieces she now sells on her Etsy shop.
But things weren’t as straight forward as it might seem. “In the past, I often tried to teach myself embroidery,” admitted Case on a blog post published on her website. “I’d buy the books! I’d buy the fabric! I’d buy the floss! And the hoops! And the needles! PHEW… And then I’d promptly get ‘too busy’ and put them away in the cupboard. Only to pick them up a couple of months later and start the process all over again. I’d get so excited to do something creative and then KAPUT I’d give up.”
Then, according to her, something quite extraordinary happened and she had to take some unexpected time off work because of a bout of illness. “I needed something that I could do at home,” she writes, “that would entertain me but also was calming, relaxing and creative.”
And so, inspired by her grandmother, she took – once again – to embroidery. “Embroidery became this mindful experience for me,” says Case. “Something that made me feel uplifted but at ease. I’d become so connected to screens, to work, to getting it all done; embroidery was able to be the antithesis of that.”
Now she shares this passion with others, creating modern hoop art and one of a kind jewelry pieces which you can also admire through her Instagram page.
