Chloe Redfern Will Inspire You to Embroider

Chloe Redfern’s embroideries appeal to both children and adults. With flora and fauna – specifically wildflowers and birds — taking center stage throughout her embroideries, her work invites nature homeward.

Based in Birmingham, Redfern ties her love of nature to her childhood. “When I was growing up we had a caravan in Wales and I loved the wildness of the landscape,” she told Ballpitmag. “I think going there instilled in me a great love for nature and the outdoors.” After completing an art foundation course in college, she worked with mixed media textile and paper collage before moving on to hand embroidery in 2015.

“I love the fact that it takes quite a long time to stitch a piece, so it is quite a meditative process,” she says, “and I find all of the materials really pleasing; the colorful threads, beads, lovely natural colored fabric (natural calico is my fabric of choice) and the wooden hoops.”

Indeed, hand crafting and embroidering are an easy recipe for mindfulness, and Redfern herself provides downloadable embroidery patterns on her Etsy shop, alongside a small selection of embroidered hoop art. “One of the things I find most rewarding about creating embroidery patterns is the thought that they are hopefully bringing enjoyment to people,” she says, “so I would like to keep creating new patterns, as well as working on new original pieces to further explore my favorite subject matter.”

You might just be inspired to take on embroidery yourself!

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Hello all 🙂 This post has been a bit of a long time coming, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I mentioned in my last post that I felt like I needed a bit of a change of direction. I spent a good while looking at options, thinking, planning, but my embroidery work kept calling me back to it. I tried to resist but just felt more and more strongly drawn back even though I’d been contemplating a total career change! I think I wrestled with it as I felt like it was going back to a comfort zone of sorts which I felt wasn’t necessarily a positive thing given that it was a comfort zone in which I felt isolated at times (or thought I did) and which wasn’t financially viable, but I thought; what if, instead of a total career change, I change what I’m doing with my career, if that makes sense. Get focussed and (this is a massive part of it for me) take myself and my small business seriously. For so long I’ve put down what I do as though it’s not a ‘proper’ job (even though I never think that about other creatives!) So I’m trying a new approach. Taking myself seriously as a professional person, structuring working days better (this is part of the taking it seriously thing, when I’m working I’m working and won’t decide it’s okay to stop and do housework in the middle of it!) and sticking with it, and making sure I do enough to not feel isolated, so more worky social stuff (possibly looking at small business courses, doing fairs etc) and more outside of work too (scheduling proper bits of time off, which I’ve never done before) I also have lots of new ideas I’d like to set into action but must take it a step at a time. I’m planning to share more, too; I mentioned a blog which I’ve not started yet (though have been journaling which has been good) but I think I’m going to stick with IG and FB for now but possibly with an embroidery blog coming soon. I have a lot of thinking and planning to do so I feel I’ll be making a slow gradual return especially as I’m still really struggling with missing George, but I just thought I’d post an update 🙂 We have taken on a new little dog, too, but I shall do a proper post about her shortly. I hope you are all well 🙂

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