I started embroidery to stop fidgeting
I have a hard time keeping still, and I have a problem with biting my cuticles until they're painful. I needed something to occupy my hands when watching a Youtube, Netflix, etc. And I wanted to find a hobby to do where I can have my cats on my lap (I try to hide the thread from them, because they are fiends).
I love the idea of taking an old medium and adding modern twists to them. I love the juxtaposition of grandma's embroidery and curse words, and it turns out a lot of other people do too. After about a year of just selling finished embroidery pieces, and becoming very bored with stitching the same several designs over and over again, I started making kits, and then PDF patterns.
It was difficult at first to try to describe stitches just with words and photos. But in March of 2020 I made an embroidery kit of flowers with "Wash your fucking hands" around it, and it was very popular, so I really got to fine tune my booklets and overall design of the kit from making over 1,000 of them that year.
I made about 600 of them in April 2020 alone, where every waking moment was spent working on them. It was like the chocolate factory scene from I Love Lucy. I lost weight from not having enough time to eat. It was really difficult, but I didn't take it for granted, knowing millions of people were losing their income.
