Personal Threads: The Needlecraft Road, Guest Post by Beth Arnold (assisted by Julia Robinson Shimuzu)

It started with a skid on the low pile carpet at work, then a shaky left foot, then a slow uneven gait, my left arm no longer swinging…it was Parkinson’s.  It does not and will not define me.  My needlework defines me.  My travels define me.  My family defines me.  

Several years ago, on a weekend beach trip in southern California with two women who also have PD, we stopped at a needlework shop in Ventura where I found a kit for a glorious, red-headed counted-cross stitch Mermaid.  She came with beads and required over 40 skeins of colored cotton embroidery floss.  I bought the kit and ordered olive green 30-count linen.  I could not wait to get started.   I love going through my collection of embroidery thread that is organized by number, pulling out the ones I have and making a list of those I don’t.  I also love going to the craft store and pulling the new colors I need.  Over the years I have worked on her and she now stands at about 80% complete. 

 

Mermaid

When I told a good friend about my predicament with my mermaid she said “your mermaid is beautiful and unfinished, just like you”.  And I thought, she is right, at least about the unfinished part.  She taught me that I have more to give, more art to create where I will be inspired and energized by color and texture and flowers and my travels. 

Wild Flower

My husband was working in the Bay Area for several years while I remained in Los Angeles and I had many nights and weekends alone where my Mermaid kept me company along with other needle crafts like knitting, embroidery and sewing (both hand and machine).  That ended a few years ago and I put my mermaid and other projects aside after my husband and I bought a new home on a hill that we have decked out with interior and exterior entertainment spaces.  My favorite is our rose terrace that has over 30 rose bushes.   Sometimes I joke that I raise roses in lieu of not having children.  We also have a parterre, fruit trees and a Zen garden with topiaries.  We have a lovely view of the glen from our living area bay window.  

About a year ago I started having double vision. My doctor says it’s the PD.  One of the many odd PD symptoms.   There is nothing to be done.  My fine motor skills are also changing, making it harder to thread a needle and sew or knit or write or type when I am “off”.  This “off” period that can vary but in my case is about an hour, refers to the transition time between medication doses which I take at six different times a day.  So we go on and off, up and down, just like in sewing.  

It was startling when I realized I could no longer work on my Mermaid. Thirty count linen was just too small and I have not been able to find a comfortable magnifier stronger than the one I own.  So I started anew with a blank slate thinking of what I could make with my growing collection of tulle, felted wool, beads, fabric and metallic thread.  Starting with my tulle collection I did an internet search and learned you can singe the edge of a round piece of tulle to make flower petals.  I made a few small flowers this way and sewed them on little felt jewelry pouches.

I began thinking about how I could use the tulle in other ways. For years I have been buying up tulle remnants from fabric stores, tucking them in a drawer to my craft table.  Like with the embroidery floss, I adored the colors and the idea that something fancy could be made with them and I needed to own as many as I could find on sale. 

I have always enjoyed close up pictures of flowers, maybe from the influence of Georgia O’Keefe who I discovered in college, and ever since getting my first camera I have taken hundreds of flower close-ups from places I have traveled to such as Red Butte Gardens in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was particularly “fruitful.” On a trip to Denmark in the midd-80’s I fell in love with their brightly colored Danish Flower Thread, cross-stitched linen botanical designs.  

Yellow Embroidered Pillow 

With the grace of God, I was inspired to pull up a few of my flower photos and began piecing together the felted wool and tulle petals in small tapestries.  I needed to hold the tulle and felt in place.  I tried stabbing wool roving into both and the result was really pleasing.  I am able to use the wool roving like oil paint, mixing color, using contrasting colors. It was thrilling to find online retailers selling roving samplers. I now own over 100 colors.  I recently organized my roving using “The Secret Lives of Color” by Kassia St. Clair.    There were names I have never heard of before like “woad” (in the blue family) and “verdigris”.  I spent hours grouping and re-grouping my lovely colors into eight boxes like a rainbow. 

To help use felted wool remnants and add unique detail to my tapestries, I use small dots or beads for tiny [part of flower that looks like dots].  To make this easier I purchased a Japanese punch needle for making small wool dots.  Oh, and I also have lots of beads, purchased at General Bead in San Francisco (can you imagine two floors of colored beads)? I’m also building up my metallic thread collection

Daffodils 

My interest in needle felting goes back to 2005 when I befriended a little neighbor girl who love doing “hands-on” projects with me.   I found a kit for her to make a penguin using wool roving.   That is when I first started working with roving.  Like embroidery floss, it comes in many colors.  A few years later I stumbled on a shop called “The Wool Lady”, now sadly closed, and I got my first taste for felted wool applique. 

Tapestry 1, Daffodils

The colors, textures and designs were endless.  I became interested in Jacobean designs and made several pillow tops with intricate designs.   [photo?] I continued to make counted cross stitch pieces, looking for patterns with lots of color.  [consider photo of partially finished mermaid – cannot see to finis due to PD – caused blurry vision] Parkinson’s can affect fine motor skills so my hand-writing has become a mess unless I go super slow.  This makes embroidery and knitting difficult so I schedule my crafting that requires a steady hand during my “on” times.

Tapestry 2

My mom would be so pleased to see my latest creations. She grew up on a small farm in Buffalo, Kentucky and her mom, my Grandma Mom, moved around the south because my great grandfather was a heavy handed school teacher and kept getting fired.  Both my mom and grandma influenced my interest in crafts.  My grandma crocheted me a colorful doll blanket using remnants.  I think that may have been my first experience with fiber arts and I was certainly captured by the colors in my blanket. The blanket sits safely in my cedar chest. 

 

Grandma's Colorful Crocheted Blanket

My mom went on to be a homemaker with four of us kids, me being the oldest. My first memory of sewing is with her using her old Singer sewing machine. She made clothes for my Chatty Cathy doll. A favorite is a purple grape print with white rickrack. And my mom made most of my clothes (we wore uniforms to school).  One year my mom made red flannel pajamas (3 girls and 1 boy) for each of us.  Can you imagine all that red flannel?!! Her work was beautifully done and immaculate.

Red Flannel Pyjamas

My mom taught me to sew on her Singer and I made rudimentary attempts at making doll clothes.  As a girl scout I learned about embroidery and our troop leader taught us how to knit using sharpened No. 2 pencils for needles!

Pink Dress

In high school I took   Home Economics and continued honing my sewing skills. By the time I started college, I was able to make blouses, dresses and skirts.   My freshman year I took a life-drawing class.  I will never forget my embarrassment seeing a stark naked man for the first time.  The model at one point turned his seat so he faced me and then took a pose where he pointed directly at me!  

I took art history classes in additional to business administration and planned to become a CPA.  And once out of college I headed to Texas to begin my career in accounting and finance.  

Having little money, I made most of my clothes including blazers and skirts and blouses.  After passing the CPA exam I had more free time and that afforded me visits to art museums and galleries which I had loved since my teens when my dad introduced them to me on a family trip to NYC. Over the years I took various painting classes.  I loved oil painting and mixing and merging colors.  As I progressed in my career over the years I spent less time sewing my own clothes and painting (oils are pretty messy and having proper space and light became an issue.) But I always planned to come back to oil painting.

To satisfy my creative leanings I continued to knit, sew, embroider over the years.  I have a habit of not finishing my knitting and embroidery projects. Fortunately, our new home has a small basement and a loft in the garage, affording me space to safely store my work.  I sometimes wonder how many hours were consumed while I thought about work problems that needed solving or family issues or what to fix for dinner. I always planned on returning to my projects when I retired.   

Beth Arnold with her friend Julia
who helped type out her story

Life is a wonderful journey.  My niece recently told me she wants to learn to knit.  And she inherited mom’s old singer sewing machine. I look forward to showing her my mermaid and other projects.  Maybe she will be interested in my tapestries too. It’s comforting to know during these pandemic times with so many options and distractions to know that some of life’s basics matter.  Sewing, knitting, embroidery live on.

I am 62 years old (and) live in Los Angeles (I) was diagnosed with Parkinson’s over 10 years ago. (I) love color love art love wildflowers especially thistle. I’ve started making small tapestries using some of my favorite media: tool, wool, beads, metallic thread here is a couple of examples Based on some of my own photographs. (this is how Beth introduced herself to me via email. Parkinson's makes it hard for her to type, so I have left the typos intact. Her friend Julia assisted in  putting together this story, which took quite a while.

Beth Arnold is a retired chief financial officer who has been battling Parkinson’s disease since 2009, when she was diagnosed, at the age of 50. Her lifelong passion for color has been satisfied by working with embroidery, knitting, oil painting and most recently tapestries where she combines felted wool, wool roving, beads and metallic thread to make colorful tapestries inspired by her own botanical photographs taken during her travels.