November 2020
Like every good story, this one started with a pandemic, a nervous graduate student, and too much time on Instagram.
It was March of 2020, and I was bored. I was trying to get whatever work done I could remotely, from my parents’ house in a suburb of Dallas, to work towards my Ph. D. at Texas A&M. However, things were feeling pretty bleak back then. There was no canned/boxed food in grocery stores, you couldn’t buy paper towels or toilet paper anywhere, and most restaurants and bars were closed until further notice. Everyone was stuck inside, and no one could go to work or school or see their friends.
Naturally, I turned to social media to provide a complete escape from the scary reality I was living in.
My social media of choice is Instagram, and most of my feed is composed of things my friends post and then art/food accounts I follow for fun. As I missed my friends more and more, I started distracting myself more with the “Explore” feature- where Instagram figures out what you might be interested in and shows you various types of accounts/posts until something seems to capture your attention.
On this “Explore” rampage, I started watching increasing numbers of videos of embroidery artists. I have never really been interested in textile art of any kind, I’m a painter by nature, so usually that’s the brand of creating I stick to (well, and writing, obviously).
But these videos caught my attention. During a time that the world seemed very confusing and sad and unstable, it was relaxing to watch videos of something that was calm, repetitive, and produced something beautiful and predictable at the end.
My little sister had tried embroidery a long time ago but had grown bored of it as a hobby. On a whim one day, I asked if she still had her kit with all of her supplies in it. She did. So I started playing around with it, and not to brag, but I was thankful that I was pretty good at it from the start.
Here’s why I say that: I think that as a graduate student and an artist, I understand what I’m good at. I know I’m a decent scientist, I’m a pretty good writer, and I’m a good painter. So when I fail at something, I tend to instantly dislike it, because I’m accustomed to being good at things I like. I think a lot of people fall into this without thinking about it, and it’s nice to call ourselves out for doing it every once in a while to realize that when we dislike something, it might just be something we need to practice at or try again. Just a thought, while we’re on that topic.
Anyway, thankfully I was decent at embroidery, so I decided I liked it and kept playing with it. I made mostly small, ornamental things at first, just to try out different types of stitches and see where the limits were of my abilities with this new media. Eventually, I thought I would try stitching something small on a t-shirt for myself, just to see if I could do it.
I made my first shirt, it was a little cropped tee with a monstera leaf embroidered on the upper left corner on the front of it. I was so excited with the result, naturally, I posted it on Instagram.
The feedback was nothing I could have expected. I got messages from people I hadn’t heard from in months, or people that I only speak to sporadically, saying they loved what I created and asking if I had made more. Some people straight up asked me if I had some kind of shop that they could buy one from. I was completely floored by the positive response I got from people based on something I made using a quarantine hobby! Once again, I took a little leap of faith and thought I would give another new thing a try, and I started an Etsy shop to sell some of the other shirts I had started making.
And once again, the response was so positive it warmed my heart! People were so encouraging of the shop, to a point that it is still going and I am currently working on custom holiday orders (while of course enjoying going back to work and school, and moving my research along at a much nicer pace!).
All of this to say: don’t let the hobbies you picked up during the pandemic just dwindle off. Keep up with them, because you never know what could happen and how something small, like an interest in embroidery, could change the trajectory of your life.
- Serina Taluja
Serina is a doctoral student in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences.
It was March of 2020, and I was bored. I was trying to get whatever work done I could remotely, from my parents’ house in a suburb of Dallas, to work towards my Ph. D. at Texas A&M. However, things were feeling pretty bleak back then. There was no canned/boxed food in grocery stores, you couldn’t buy paper towels or toilet paper anywhere, and most restaurants and bars were closed until further notice. Everyone was stuck inside, and no one could go to work or school or see their friends.
Naturally, I turned to social media to provide a complete escape from the scary reality I was living in.
My social media of choice is Instagram, and most of my feed is composed of things my friends post and then art/food accounts I follow for fun. As I missed my friends more and more, I started distracting myself more with the “Explore” feature- where Instagram figures out what you might be interested in and shows you various types of accounts/posts until something seems to capture your attention.
On this “Explore” rampage, I started watching increasing numbers of videos of embroidery artists. I have never really been interested in textile art of any kind, I’m a painter by nature, so usually that’s the brand of creating I stick to (well, and writing, obviously).
But these videos caught my attention. During a time that the world seemed very confusing and sad and unstable, it was relaxing to watch videos of something that was calm, repetitive, and produced something beautiful and predictable at the end.
My little sister had tried embroidery a long time ago but had grown bored of it as a hobby. On a whim one day, I asked if she still had her kit with all of her supplies in it. She did. So I started playing around with it, and not to brag, but I was thankful that I was pretty good at it from the start.
Here’s why I say that: I think that as a graduate student and an artist, I understand what I’m good at. I know I’m a decent scientist, I’m a pretty good writer, and I’m a good painter. So when I fail at something, I tend to instantly dislike it, because I’m accustomed to being good at things I like. I think a lot of people fall into this without thinking about it, and it’s nice to call ourselves out for doing it every once in a while to realize that when we dislike something, it might just be something we need to practice at or try again. Just a thought, while we’re on that topic.
Anyway, thankfully I was decent at embroidery, so I decided I liked it and kept playing with it. I made mostly small, ornamental things at first, just to try out different types of stitches and see where the limits were of my abilities with this new media. Eventually, I thought I would try stitching something small on a t-shirt for myself, just to see if I could do it.
I made my first shirt, it was a little cropped tee with a monstera leaf embroidered on the upper left corner on the front of it. I was so excited with the result, naturally, I posted it on Instagram.
The feedback was nothing I could have expected. I got messages from people I hadn’t heard from in months, or people that I only speak to sporadically, saying they loved what I created and asking if I had made more. Some people straight up asked me if I had some kind of shop that they could buy one from. I was completely floored by the positive response I got from people based on something I made using a quarantine hobby! Once again, I took a little leap of faith and thought I would give another new thing a try, and I started an Etsy shop to sell some of the other shirts I had started making.
And once again, the response was so positive it warmed my heart! People were so encouraging of the shop, to a point that it is still going and I am currently working on custom holiday orders (while of course enjoying going back to work and school, and moving my research along at a much nicer pace!).
All of this to say: don’t let the hobbies you picked up during the pandemic just dwindle off. Keep up with them, because you never know what could happen and how something small, like an interest in embroidery, could change the trajectory of your life.
- Serina Taluja
Serina is a doctoral student in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences.