Woven Golden is a small business handcrafting original and customizable embroidered works of art with lots of love. Each piece is a melding of artist and client, both creative visions coming together to create something worth loving and sharing.
Q: Tell us a little bit about how you began practicing embroidery. It’s still a very niche art form, although it’s been growing rapidly. Did you have a mentor or are you self-taught?
I quite literally stumbled into the art of embroidery. The summer after my freshman year of college I was home a month earlier than my summer job started. I brought home six books and finished them all, tore through some Netflix shows, and was bored out of my mind every day because I was home alone for so long. That’s when I found my little sister’s box of fabric. She was learning how to sew clothes so there was a lot of lose fabric, thread, and needles around her stuff, so one day I just picked it up and went for it. The first piece I made were some song lyrics that I liked and I used the wrong kind of thread and didn’t have a hoop to hold the fabric in place so my hand kept cramping up. But once I was done I had about a hundred more design ideas. The next I went to Michaels, bought some real supplies and never looked back.
That summer I stitched a hoop for my sisters, my friends, myself—anyone and everyone, really. Just to practice. I must have made over a dozen over those months, and each one got progressively better. I am completely self-taught, which means my first few hoops were rough. But, after reading a lot of books, practicing rows and rows of stitches, and watching YouTube videos, I managed to develop my own system and style to creating embroidery hoops that really works for me. I experiment a lot with it, but always try to keep it my own.
Q: What is your goal with your art?
When I first started Woven Golden, it was just a space for me to showcase my work. A digital portfolio of sorts. Once I really started to get into the art form, I began to realize how amazing the community and whole idea of modern embroidery is––especially for women!
Woven Golden has become an outlet of expression. When I finally started selling my pieces, and having people begin reaching out to me for commissions, I realized that I wanted to make hoops spread some happiness. There is nothing like unwrapping something that is homemade. Each hoop I make is drawn by hand and worked on until it’s the way I want it and my client wants it. There is nothing I love more than hearing my clients’ responses to seeing their hoop for the first time. It is so much fun for me to be able to execute an idea that a person might have. Making a vision a reality makes me feel a little giddy. It makes people happy! That’s all I really want to do.
Q: I know part of your mission is to lift up “domestic” art forms to a place of higher respect in the art world and our culture at large. How do you think non-artists can help you achieve this?
Embroidery, to me, is such a beautiful, skillful, and thoughtful craft. It is an art form that is centuries old and originally was a form of craftsmanship that was taken so seriously and valued greatly (men were often embroiderers). However, most people associate embroidery with the sampler and the schooling of women. Having a completed sampler of your embroidery as a young woman was essentially saying “look at how accomplished I am, you should marry me.” It was effectively a woman’s degree. For a good long time it has been viewed as something solely domestic and “women’s work,” but now it is something different. An amazing trend in contemporary embroidery is feminist embroidery, where stitching is used to make feminist statements. Which, when you think about it, is kind of genius and hilarious. For so long embroidery has been something less than… I believe it’s been written off as an illegitimate art form until more recently. Perhaps because of its attachment to femininity and the female ideal. Yet, contemporary embroidery has effectively reclaimed the needle and the art form that once defined and constrained women. So, if we want to move forward and view embroidery as something more than just a school girl curriculum or hobby, I think we have to loosen the ties to embroidery and womanliness. I think a reason people enjoy embroidery so much today is because it is so accessible––anyone can learn how to embroider. There are men in the embroidery community. It is no longer “women’s work,” and I think that it needs to be given more respect.
Q: When did you know that you’d be able to sell your products and turn this into a small business? When you realized that there was a market for your work did your ideas and attitudes about your artistry change?
When I first started making hoops, it was a fun hobby and something that I only shared with family and close friends. In fact, the first couple of projects that I completed I didn’t even document because I never thought about sharing them. Creating Woven Golden was a big move for me. Suddenly, all my work was out there and I realized that I loved sharing it so much more. I didn’t really start selling anything until I was encouraged to do so by my roommate at the time. She was my first customer and I got my first commission to do a wedding hoop. We worked together on the design and I realized that I loved making the hoops for such a special and intentional reason. Plus, I love to collaborate and make visions into realities. Once I started opening Woven Golden for custom orders, I began to push myself more. Experimentation is important in this craft. Since I’m self-taught, experimenting is really all I can do to figure out what works and what doesn’t. The first year of WG was a lot of trial and error as I gained confidence in my skills. There was one season where I was in school and had so many orders to juggle around finals time and I remember having the fleeting feeling of resentment towards my obligation to finish these hoops because I knew I should be doing homework. However, I’ve gotten much better at balancing those things in my life and it has become clear to me that no matter what, I love this art and I feel blessed that people love my art enough to want to buy it. So, really, I just feel stupid grateful.
Q: What advice would you give to a young girl interested in creating and possibly selling art?
Never question your own creativity. Before embroidery, I did not think that I was creative or artistic at all. I was convinced that I was just a “fast learner,” which may be true; however, I did not personally validate myself in my art for a long while and it did me no good. So, be confident in your skills, but also have a willingness to fail. I have started so many projects, drawn so many sketches of things that have never come to fruition. I’ve made full hoops for clients only to cut out the whole thing because it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Don’t look at those moments as a sign to give up. Keep going and eventually you will find your stride. Also, humility is huge. I am well aware that there are more skillful and established fiber artists than myself. But it’s not a competition. I look up to so many in the embroidery community, and I understand that there is so much to learn from others. So, trust yourself but do so graciously.
Q: Lastly, where would you send readers who are interested in embroidery and want to learn more? Are there certain resources you use? Is there another female artist whose work really inspires you?
DMC’s Instagram and website are amazing (DMC manufactures some of the best embroidery floss). Also, I have spent extensive time researching embroidery and its history/origins. Some great resources I have I received by reaching out to the women who are behind the Tennessee Sampler Project. Some other amazing references include: the Victoria and Albert Museum, San Francisco School of Needlework and Design, and the National Museum of American History.
Furthermore, there is an expansive embroidery community via Instagram. Searching embroidery hashtags can get you connected to some awesome fiber artists who often film how-to videos which are great references for learning. Also @nicegirlsneedleclub reposts many of these badass stitchers. Some of my favorite embroidery ladies include, but are not limited to: Sarah K. Benning @sarahkbenning (I did a workshop with her and pretty much swooned over her the whole time; she’s my embroidery hero), Julie Jackson @subversivecrossstitch, Shannon Downey @badasscrossstitch, Michelle Staub @stitchingsabbatical, and Jenn Riggs @threadhoney, and many, many more.
Sarah Cullen is the founder of Woven Golden, a site where she shares her expert embroidery with the world. Sarah has cultivated a deep passion for art as well as for the importance of raising up women’s and domestic art forms to the status that they deserve. Sarah recognizes that embroidery is often dismissed as “low” art and works to change that negative perception by showing the skillful design, usage of lettering, and embellishment qualities of stitch work. Sarah currently attends Belmont University and is majoring in English with a minor in Secondary Education. She is set to earn her bachelor’s degree in May 2019 and plans to stay in Nashville, hopefully land an awesome job, and launch WG’s first website in the future.
To learn more, and to purchase some of Sarah’s art check out @woven_golden on Instagram.
Cross-Stitch and Canvas 