Laney Boyd has degrees in music and experimented with many visual arts and crafts. She discovered embroidery and now creates detailed hand embroidery art. Her favorite stitch? The satin stitch!
How did you get started designing embroidery? Always an artist, or was there a “moment”?
I’ve been involved in the arts since I was very young, but it was almost always the performing arts (I’m a classically trained singer with a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s in music history). I’ve experimented with a lot of different visual arts and crafts over the years – knitting, painting, origami, photography, you name it – but nothing ever seemed to stick.
It wasn’t until after I turned 30 that I finally discovered embroidery. It was 2020 and we were all on lockdown due to the pandemic, and a friend of mine who had been laid off from her job was offering custom embroidery pieces to make some income. I asked her to stitch a portrait of my husband and kids, and when I received the finished piece I couldn’t stop staring at it. I was completely fascinated by what she had been able to create with just a bit of fabric and a few colors of thread!
After watching a whole slew of YouTube tutorials teaching various embroidery stitches, I decided to order a beginner’s kit from Etsy to try it out for myself. At the risk of sounding cheesy, from the very first stitch it felt as though something that had been rattling around loose inside of me finally clicked into place. I truly believe hand embroidery was the art form I was always meant to find. It’s been nearly four years now and hardly a day has gone by that I haven’t stitched. I’ve heard a lot of jokes about pandemic hobbies that turned into personality traits, but I’ll happily claim this one – I don’t think I could stop now if I tried!
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What do you do differently? What is your signature that makes your work stand out as yours?
I thankfully haven’t felt any sort of inclination or pressure to “niche down” to specific stitching styles or subject matter, but there are a few techniques I truly love doing that people seem to associate with me at this point!
The first is my use of lots and lots of satin stitch. Satin stitch is notoriously difficult to get right, and a lot of embroiderers choose to avoid it whenever possible. I really enjoy the challenge of it, though! It’s a very meditative stitch for me, and so incredibly satisfying when I’m able to get it perfectly smooth and shiny.
My second and more recently acquired “signature” is multi-hoop designs. Instead of stitching an entire piece within one hoop and framing it that way, I’ve been experimenting with patterns that stretch across multiple hoops laid out horizontally, vertically, or even diagonally (bonus points if the hoops are somehow connected by threads that run between them)! These layouts have really stretched my design capabilities and have pushed me to think about the composition of my pieces in an entirely new way.
Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?
Oh, I’m a huge planner!
Every piece starts out as a sketch which I then tweak until it feels as though I can really envision the stitching. When I first started out I used paper and pencil to fine-tune my designs, but I’ve since acquired a tablet so thankfully the planning stage goes much quicker these days.
I also keep a lot of notes as I go. Everything from color palette to stitch selection to how many strands of floss I use for each section gets written down for later reference.
I love the look of more abstract, unplanned embroidery pieces, but that’s just not how my brain works. I don’t like leaving anything to chance – extreme Type A personality over here!
Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?
As boring as this might sound, my inspiration often boils down to whatever happens to be directly in front of me at the time!
When I decided to stitch a violin, I was researching a ton of violin music for a freelance writing job. When I stitched a wacky inflatable tube man, it was because a carwash near my house had recently installed one and my kids lost their minds every time we passed it while driving. Several of my pieces began with offhand phrases pulled from conversations with friends or family members, or a throwaway line I read in a book.
In a way I find this quite comforting: during moments when I feel like I’ve been sucked dry creatively and will never have another good idea for a new piece as long as I live, I can almost always override that irrational thought pattern and remind myself that if I just keep my eyes open and continue going about my day-to-day life, inspiration will eventually strike again!
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works?
One of my most popular pieces is one I lovingly call “Thought Bobbin.” It was my very first multi-hoop design; one hoop shows a person with a tangled mess of thread for a head while the other hoop shows another person with a neatly wound floss bobbin for a head, and a single piece of thread stretches between and connects the two.
The idea for this piece came from a conversation I had with my husband in which I was feeling very internally tangled up about something. Talking it through with him helped me to sort out my thoughts and emotions until they were feeling much less muddled, the way one might unpick a tangled knot of thread and smooth it out. I made a joking comment to him that he was like a bobbin for my thought threads, and the pattern came to me fully formed from there.
When I began sketching the hoops out, I knew I wanted the focus to be mainly on the two heads to clearly communicate the relationship dynamic I was aiming to depict, so I chose to keep the bodies as minimal black line art and center the color and texture on the heads alone. Once I started stitching it came together very quickly! “Thought Bobbin” now hangs in our bedroom as a love letter to my husband.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
I’m usually working on three or four hoops at any given time. Since hand embroidery is by nature an incredibly slow art form with some of my pieces taking several weeks or even months to complete, I try to make sure I can freely move between projects so as not to burn out on any single one.
I almost always have one or two commissions going, and I’m also usually stitching a personal project with another couple in the design stage tucked away. How often I start something new depends on what pieces I have going at the time, but I would say every 2-3 weeks as a rough estimate. I’m just so grateful to have enough interest in my work that I’m able to keep myself busy!
Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like?
My current workspace is in an unfinished repurposed basement storage room lit by a single bare bulb – definitely not ideal, and not terribly Instagram pretty! I do have some good work lamps, several plastic storage bins for all my supplies, and a pegboard for hanging extra hoops and some finished projects, so it gets the job done.
The lack of natural light is my biggest issue since it’s necessary for a lot of the fine detail stitching I do. I often travel around the house in search of better lighting or take my projects on the go. Thankfully hand embroidery is a very portable art, but I’ll continue to hold out hope for an eventual fixed workspace next to a lovely large window!
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
The act of stitching will always be my favorite part of the process.
There’s a kind of rhythm to it, albeit a slow one, that allows my mind to enter a flow state. Stitching for me is meditative and methodical, and I find it deeply fulfilling to watch the image I’m creating slowly but surely come into being.
As for which part of the process challenges me, I think as with most things it’s getting started at all!
Getting my ideas out of my head and onto a hoop in a way that clearly communicates what I’m thinking can be really difficult for me. Every once in a while things will come together effortlessly, but often I’ll struggle with a design for hours before it accurately reflects what’s in my brain.
I would love for someone to develop technology that would let me beam mental images out of my head directly onto fabric!
What do you learn about who you are through your embroidery?
Embroidery has given me a lot of insight into the way I view the world, both in the physical and abstract senses. I’m a lot more cognizant now about the things I focus on or am likely to notice, as well as the things that tend to fade into the background.
I also never considered myself a terribly patient person until picking up embroidery, but if I’m able to complete a piece that takes 50+ hours over the course of several months then I must have at least some patience (or at least a healthy amount of persistence)!
Where can people see your work?
You can follow me on Instagram @thistles.and.thread to see photos of all my past projects and keep up with current ones!
Readers can also feel free to contact me via email with any questions: [email protected]
Interview posted June 2024
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