Terrie Ray’s Embroidery Enchantment
Passion For Embroidery Brightens My Life – Let It Brighten Yours Too!
My mother introduced me to the world of color in the very beginning. “You look good in blue,” she said in one of my earliest memories; “It picks up the blue in your eyes!” Maybe that’s how the whole thing started.
My Embroidery Story
As I grew up, my mother pointed out the colors in my clothes, in different fabrics that she sewed, in TV shows, nature—everywhere! She showed me the different colors—blues in stages that changed into purple, and those that eventually turn into green. She let me select my school clothes and helped me choose; I learned that what looks good is colors working together. And I loved to have artistic designs on my clothes. At that time, most of those were screen-printed and embroidery was not generally available–but I thought embroidery was special indeed.
I began doing hand embroidery and loved it! One of my favorite pastimes through my 30’s was this wonderful art form. These are some of the hand-embroidered projects I did during those younger years.
In the 60s…
In the 1960s, the hippies came into the national scene, bringing with them a love for beautiful wearable art—embroidery and jewelry! I taught myself to make “daisy chains—a design of beads in jewelry. And I was already hand-embroidering tea towels and pillowcases with my own crafted flowers, so it was just natural to start embroidering flowers on my jeans.
People loved it! They started asking me to put flowers on their jeans. I did some but couldn’t keep up with the requests because hand embroidery was too slow. I told a friend that I couldn’t do his jeans because I just couldn’t find the time. He persisted, asking many times, then said, “I’ll pay you, I’ll pay you!” It was the first time I’d been offered money for embroidery.
The truth was, I didn’t have time to embroider his jeans because I was too busy doing mine! All my spare time was spent making flowers fancier and more detailed. Paisley shapes, birds, butterflies — it just grew and grew with experience. I put a flower wreath on a shirt. Beads on some leather pants. Christmas holly and berries on a shirt. My favorite has always been embroidering lines of flowers up the side of my jeans — art from the hem to the rivet. This became much easier with the later advent of embroidery machines, such as the work on these jeans.
As a young adult when I learned to sew, different colors of denim fabric were so available! I made aqua jeans, yellow, green, and burgundy jeans and used pretty mother-of-pearl-like snaps instead of a zipper for the fly—and of course, coordinating embroidered flowers galore!
Although jeans weren’t allowed at work, mine looked so dressy that nothing was said when I wore the colored jeans to the job.
For a while, I got very busy with my career and stopped embroidering.
But when I needed surgery, a kind lady gave me a hand embroidery kit and a book for my weeks of recuperation; I learned even more techniques and styles to enhance jeans.
Fifteen years later, table-top embroidery machines became available for home use.
With the support of my wonderful husband, I bought one–and a new era blossomed! Designs were on “cards” containing digital instructions telling the machine what and how to embroider. It did great work, and my spare money went to buy new designs and an ever-increasing collection of threads in many beautiful colors.
My time went to learn more about this new embroidery art; I was crazy about it. It embroidered so much faster and the designs were beautiful.
When I was away from home and didn’t have my machines, I continued my creative hand embroidery on my jeans and shirts; it became more and more sophisticated. One of my favorite and most complex hand-embroidered designs is the carousel lion (photo above), which I drew from a picture and worked on incrementally for several years. The lion is a work of carousel art and actually had a name, but I don’t remember it and can’t find it now. Please look at the picture. If anyone knows the name of this lion, I’d much appreciate hearing from you!
Oil Painting
I began oil painting—another adventure in color! I took lessons and enjoyed it for several years, making some handsome paintings that still hang on my walls. I eventually had to make a choice between oil painting and machine embroidery, as they were both very time-consuming. It was a difficult choice, but I finally chose embroidery. I still miss painting, but embroidery just keeps turning my crank.
Christmas Trees
I had always loved the art of Christmas lighting — yet another wonderful experience with color! Encouraged by my husband, I became a skilled Christmas lighting decorator. Once I put 113 strings of lights on a 7-foot tree; lights were only 2-3 inches apart, and it took about two weeks to finish. It was dazzling! Friends suggested that I should have it professionally photographed. Christmas lighting remains my favorite project every Christmas season; this has also helped make the holiday season a favorite in my embroidery work. I now add Austrian and Preciosa Crystals to my embroidery, and the holidays are a time when people particularly like wearing my sparkling apparel.
At one point, I encountered what is known as Brazilian Embroidery—a striking hand-embroidery method that sits up off the fabric. It is very different and beautiful. I use mostly machine embroidery now, but Brazilian Embroidery is a technique that I can add if a creation calls for it.
Bigger, semi-professional embroidery machines with much greater capabilities became more and more available to home embroiderers, so I bought one. It was a 6-needle machine (commonly known as a “6-needle”). These machines embroider with only one needle at a time, but 6 colors can be mounted on the machine at once so designs with 6 or fewer colors can be embroidered without stopping.
After persisting through a steep learning curve, I found I could do much larger designs. The machine had beautiful, shiny satin stitches and fill stitches for bigger areas, The work had a professional look that was different from my hand embroidery. Digital designs were plentiful and cheap, so I kept acquiring them and sewing them out– all the while, becoming more and more experienced.
I eventually acquired another big semi-industrial machine—this time a 10-needle, and then a second 10-needle. It’s hard to explain how really wonderful these machines are. They have added features; one I use a lot is a camera that photographs contents or markings on fabric that is mounted on the machine,
then shows additional designs that I choose and place exactly where I want them to be embroidered—at any angle and within 1/10 of a millimeter of where I want it to appear.
This is extremely helpful in my type of work because I so often fit many designs together to fill a big area, and jointly they make a gorgeous, complex design that elicits oohs and ahs.
Today my embroidery stems from well over 50 years of experience. I choose from over 1,300 colors of accumulated rayon, polyester, and metallic threads, thousands of available designs, and over 20 colors of Austrian and Preciosa Crystals. Over the years, I have also acquired the art of integrating beads and/or sequins with my embroidery when it enhances the project.
The Secret
The basic secret of great embroidery art is a good marriage of embroidery design with the right fabric, and colors working together.
I Love To Create
I love to make really extraordinary embroidery products for others so that they can also enjoy wearing these stunning creations. I love working with people and hearing about the effect they would like to help create for their embroidered project.
Thank you for your interest in my embroidery—you’ll say, “Ooh how pretty!”
Let Me Create A Special Embroidery Piece For You
Contact me to find out how.