Embroidery Is The Hot New Way To Document Your Travels

Forbes

7 hours ago

Elin Petronella capturing Biarritz in thread Charles and Elin
As people look for ways to take a break from their devices and create something with their own hands, embroidery has taken over the internet. It's a great craft for travelers because it's easy to tote anywhere — in fact, I worked on my own piece during a recent Viking cruise — but Elin Petronella has taken it a step further by basically embroidering travelogues of her journeys and the beautiful spots she's encountered along the way.
I've been following Elin and her husband, Charles Henry, aka Charles and Elin, for years as they've embroidered some of the world's most iconic buildings and streets, creating easy to follow patterns, videos and online classes for those who want to do the same. Their free embroidery for beginner class and free pattern for embroidering Rue Galande, Paris are a great way to get started — and get hooked.
I featured Charles and Elin's book, Mindful Embroidery: Stitch Your Way to Relaxation with Charming European Street Scenes , in a guide to the best gifts for Paris lovers a few years ago and was thrilled when Elin recently announced she was releasing a new book.
Embroidery Wanderlust is a must-have for crafters and travelers alike. Because this focus on handcrafting, art and travel is more important than ever, I reached out to Elin to tell us more.
Embroidery Wanderlust is Elin Petronella's new book Charles and Elin
Congrats on the new book! Embroidery Wanderlust is gorgeous and so inspiring. It makes me believe I can actually do this myself!
Thank you so much! You can!
Why did you decide to write this book and how is it different from your first book, Mindful Embroidery ?
Mindful Embroidery is a traditional crafts book in the sense that it follows a classic how-to structure around 20 stitchable patterns. Embroidery Wanderlust, on the other hand, follows a storytelling narrative and gives you a behind the scenes look at the artworks that are featured throughout the book. It consists of 200 pages of embroidery pieces inspired by travels across Europe. You get both fun travelogue anecdotes as well as insights into the creative process.
Paris is so embroiderable! Charles and Elin
Paris is so important to your story. Tell us how you got started and how your love for both travel and embroidery came together there.
Being from a small town in Sweden, I always dreamt of adventure and traveling, and art is just the most wonderful way of bringing the two together. Hand embroidery is incredibly mobile, which is partly what got me hooked as I could bring it with me and add stitches anywhere at any time. It's a medium that fits a traveling lifestyle!
I dreamt of going to Paris ever since I saw Moulin Rouge at 13. At first, the dream was to go there and do art. I always did a lot of drawings of buildings as a reflection of my love for history, places and traveling so I wanted to make drawings of Paris. I ended up studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics instead of Art, though. On a field class in India about Sustainable Development in 2014/2015, I volunteered with an organization that taught sewing and embroidery to women as a means for them to create their own businesses and become financially independent. I picked up embroidery again (which I had done when I was younger; my mother is a seamstress) and used it for one of my class projects. What started as a stitched travel diary became a daily practice that has lasted a decade.
When I met my Parisian husband in 2016, he asked me why I didn't embroider my drawings of Parisian buildings — and that was the turning point. I stitched a building from the 7th Arrondissement and it immediately went viral when I posted it to Instagram. It got shared in art magazines and all across the web, leading to a woman who lived in that building seeing it and buying it. It was my first sale of an embroidered artwork to someone I had never met.
Elin Petronella with one of her travel-inspired embroidery pieces Charles and Elin
Talk a little about embroidering the sights you see and why this is the best, most unique souvenir you can bring home of a place.
An embroidered scene has very broad utility. You can stretch it onto a canvas and hang it like an artwork, you can turn it into a patch and put it on a bag or on the back of a jacket or even use it as a pillow cover. But the real gem about an embroidered souvenir isn't the final work but rather the process of making it. Whenever you see or engage with the work, you will remember more vividly what you did and where you went during the time of creating it. The process of stitching creates a deeper connection to the place and memories created during your trip and literally stitches it into your being. It's wonderful!
Have you documented all your travels in embroidery?
More or less, yes, haha! All apart from the one year I lived in South Africa before moving to Paris. I hadn't yet picked up embroidery but was still using other art forms to engage with and integrate in the community. The piece I made in India wasn't of a street scene but instead depicts a Kolam, a traditional powder drawing that local women in Tamil Nadu make in front of their houses every morning to welcome the good spirits. Turning one of the Kolams into an embroidery was my way of honoring their patience and concentration but in a medium close to my heart. I also stitched an Asian elephant that I transformed into a patch for my jeans jacket (and which actually got spotted at University, leading to a few embroidery patch commissions).
Architecture + embroidery = art Charles and Elin
Which have been the places that have really stood out to you, in terms of both the actual place and in the embroidery it inspired?
The first one that comes to mind is the Rue Galande in Paris, just across the street from the Notre Dame Cathedral. There are a couple of quirky buildings that you can't miss as you walk down the narrow alley to the left of the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop. My husband and I walked on this street on our first date. I took a picture and turned into a drawing and embroidery pattern. The pattern is available as a free design on our website and thousands of people around the world have downloaded and stitched it, which is just incredible.
Another big one for me is Nyhavn in Copenhagen. I grew up about an hour from there. We'd drive across the bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark and it was my first taste of 'being abroad.' I remember how much I loved it. It felt exciting to walk the alleys and feel the creative vibe that surges through the Danish capital. I've always enjoyed this place and the artwork was one of my earlier thread-painting experiments, where I reduced the number of floss strands to capture a smoother texture and result.
Nyhavn, Copenhagen Charles and Elin
Which have been the most difficult to capture in embroidery?
This is a hard question. When there are a lot of small details and textures, it can be more difficult to effectively find 'simplified' ways to capture them in ways that still have a similar visual effect. For example: the traditional Parisian balconies, which often have a lot of intricate details and rounded shapes. So, to still capture the effect of a highly detailed balcony but without the impossible stitching, I overlapped straight stitches in a seemingly random fashion to cover the surface. When you hold the piece from afar, it looks like an intricate and detailed balcony and you only see the overlapping straight stitches when you get close up. There's a similar logic to vivid trees and bushes that are monochrome. In other words, when you can't play on varying tones of green to capture more depth and life but instead have to work on contrast and light as the basis for movement. Just like I rely on painting techniques for my thread-painting, I look to sketching foundations when I stitch; what I call 'thread-sketching.' More explicitly, this means playing on the automatic 'filling' that our eyes and mind does whenever we're faced with an image. You don't have to fill an entire leaf equally for our brain to understand that it's a covered leaf. Instead, it's about strategically placing and suggesting shapes and textures to give visual clues. When this is done well, our brains see the whole picture with depth - it's fantastic!
How can someone get started on this? Do they need to have sewing or artistic experience?
Anyone can get started with embroidery! Architectural designs tend to look very advanced, when in reality I only use five basic stitches. Rather than focusing on too many or too complicated techniques, I teach how to combine the basics into endless pieces of art. We offer both free and paid resources (100+ pattern PDFs and 35+ online courses) on our site. I also run the Embroidery Wanderlust digital art magazine for inspiration of what you can do with embroidery and how to do it in a fun and easy way.
Elin Petronella has embroidered her way around the world Charles and Elin
Which are your most popular patterns?
Oh, at this point I have over 100 unique designs over on charlesandelin.com but I believe the one from Barcelona of Gaudì's Casa Batllò still tops the charts of most popular alongside the beginner's design, 'Parisian Window.'
I've also had many clients come to me with requests for designs from specific places that they've traveled to and which they are stitching together into a larger quilt or visual travel journal of sorts. I LOVE that and how art allows them to keep the memories of those travels forever.
What places are still on your travel and embroidery bucket list?
This may sound controversial for someone into traveling but I don't necessarily have a bucket list. I prefer slow, immersive travel and have lived in nine countries over the past decade. That said, I'd love to spend more time in Italy, specifically Florence. Just like Paris, I've always been drawn to the artistic vibe of Florence and dream of us renting a studio there for some months with our daughters when the time is right. We've done so much travel and work in Europe that I'm secretly dreaming of doing some longer trips overseas again too. Perhaps to more African countries, maybe South America – Brazil would be amazing!
Anything else you'd like readers to know?
I want everyone reading this to know that YOU CAN DO IT TOO! A lot of embroiderers or creative people considering embroidery as a medium feel intimidated by old-school rules about techniques and how to's, when, in reality, hand embroidery is a fantastic medium for relaxation after a long day and for playing around as you wish. My mission is to empower people to implement a regular creative practice in their life as part of a holistic lifestyle that also is fun and creatively enriching. With embroidery you can create stories, bring it with you on travels (or even your commute to work or in between meetings) and personalize your clothes in a budget friendly way. The sky is the limit!
For inspiration, embroidery patterns and signed copies of Embroidery Wanderlust , visit charlesandelin.com and follow along on Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.