Best Embroidery Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In embroidery, there’s just as much undoing as there is doing—plucking and pulling your thread back through the holes you pierced to see where you might have gone off-course, and where you might begin again. Our ancestors once believed the stars themselves were a result of this kind of occurrence, pinpricks of light poked in the fabric of night. The Creator doesn’t make mistakes, but sometimes it’s so damn hard to see the reason.”

Reason God Stars Creativity Creator Thread Constellations Ancestors Undoing Embroidery

Book:Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“I embroider these tales with charm and magic because that’s how I experienced them. The trickster is a threshold being, between two realms. One foot planted here, the other beyond. The letter and the spirit.”

Spirit Magic Experience Memory Charm Letter Embroidery Realm Trickster

Book:Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“Sewing is a way to mark our existence on cloth: patterning our place in the world, voicing our identity, sharing something of ourselves with others and leaving the indelible evidence of our presence in stitches held fast by our touch.”

Memories Sewing Craft Embroidery Cloth

Book:Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

Source: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

“Tatterfell sews on cunning cuffs made from the scales of pinecones around the edges of frayed sleeves. Small tears in skirts are stitched over with embroidery in the shape of leaves and pomegranates and- on one- a cavorting fox. She has stitched dozens of leather slippers for me. I will be expected to dance so fiercely that I wear through a pair every night.”

Holly Black The Folk Of The Air Jude Duarte Jude The Cruel Prince Sewing Mending Embroidery Stitching Tatterfell

Book:The Cruel Prince

Source: The Cruel Prince

“If the reality of our life has become an unsettling arabesque puzzle and we still want to add more filigree embroidery to it, we might, some day, expect to stray from the point of recognition, lose the final thread, be expelled to the edge of delusion and forced to dance on the brim of chaos. ("Alert. High noon." )”

Chaos Recognition Delusion Puzzle Edge Embroidery High Noon Arabesque Expelled Filigree

Author:Erik Pevernagie

“[God] only undertakes that *the steps* of a good man should be ordered by the Lord. […] Not the whole pattern, but the next stitch in the canvas.”

Christian Life Guidance Christian Living Embroidery God S Guidance Stitching Cross Stitch Embroidering Needlepoint

Book:The Secret of Guidance

Source: The Secret of Guidance

“Embroidery is beautiful not only for what you see, but for all you don’t. From the back, it’s a messy map—absolute chaos, all switchbacks and starts. Knots upon knots, pulled with teeth and pricked fingers. Each one a prayer, on a string.”

God Prayer Creativity Chaos Creator Thread Knots Embroidery String

Book:Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

Source: Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“As far as we could tell, the face of the revolution was a sea of embroidering women, patiently waiting the resignation of their repressive governor.”

Activism Sewing Embroidery Oaxaca

Author:Diana Denham

“Tombs are the clothes of the dead and a grave is a plain suit; while an expensive monument is one with embroidery.”

Clothes Graves Suits Expensive Monument Tombs Embroidery

Author:R. Buckminster Fuller

“The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spiderweb of the micrometer.”

Wells Eye Stars Delicate Needles Mesh Embroidery

Book:Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals

Source: Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals

“Humility is the embroidery of chiefs.”

Humility Chiefs Embroidery

Author:Bill Vaughan

“The fellows who amuze me are the Albanians. An Albanian on the mash is almost exactly like the medieval swells of the Italian frescoes & the first ones we met quite startled us. They wear the tight-fitting trunk hose made of woolen stuff hooked up the back of the leg. It is white with long black stripes of embroidery down the leg & at the top in front the shirt is pulled through slashes. They are long slim chaps with dandy little moustaches & are most theatrical in effect.”

Firsts Littles Long Made Stuff Black White Effects Fronts Mets Fellows Legs Shirts Italian Medieval Fitting Theatrical Hooked Trunks Stripes Slim Chaps Moustache Dandy Embroidery Albanian

Author:Edith Durham

“One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.”

Thinking Men Helping Hands Baby Husband Clothes Garden Empty Mere Bridges Servant Plato Daddy Microbes Embroidery Empty Words Parallelogram

Book:Daddy-Long-Legs

Source: Daddy-Long-Legs

“Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The tufted crow-toe, and pale gessamine, The white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet, The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well attir'd woodbine, With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears: Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.”

Wells Lying Dies White Tears Flower Rose Cups Pale Shed Toes Violet Jet Crow Glowing Forsaken Pensive Musk Embroidery Pansies

Author:John Milton

“The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery.”

Made Shots Female Males Feathers Embroidery

Book:The Great Bustard and Other People: Containing: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and How to Become Extinct

Source: The Great Bustard and Other People: Containing: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and How to Become Extinct

“Updike's style is an exquisite blend of Melville and Austen: reading him is like cutting through whale blubber with embroidery scissors.”

Reading Cutting Style Exquisite Whales Austen Scissors Embroidery Melville

Book:Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye

Source: Reflections In A Jaundiced Eye

“Oh, I wish it were in my power to put men in the place of fashionable women for one six months! They should curl their hair, consult the milliner, make spongecake, do a little embroidery, wear long skirts, and dress so tightly that they could scarcely breathe.”

Men Should Littles Long Wish Feminism Hair Months Six Dresses Breathe Six Months Fashionable Skirts Curls Embroidery Long Skirts

Author:Lucy Stone

“I'm good at embroidery. It's what I always wanted to do.... Yep, instead of whoring, I just wanted to do fancy embroidery.”

Wanted Fancy Embroidery Needlework

Author:Lillian Hellman

“The music of the supreme architect, Bach, is filled with pages of discursive argument and rumination, glorifying the nameless whole by a rich embroidery of passages which lead everywhere and nowhere. The ideas are presented, stood on their head, dissolved into fragments, until the ultimate message becomes the connections of all things great and small, a chain of being which cannot be secured until the last note is in place.”

Ideas Whole Lasts Rich Messages Pages Argument All Things Connections Ultimate Filled Notes Supreme Chains Passages Architect Fragments Secured Nameless Embroidery Rumination

Author:Russell Sherman

“Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.”

“He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebecca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, and in which Amarana Ursula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child, and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past.”

Giving Children Soul Past House Bears Lessons Weight Tiny Chinese Sat Crush Chairs Clothings Flash Colonels Lucidity Rebecca Embroidery Rocking Chairs Checkers Marquez

Author:Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I do these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans our of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly.”

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Source: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (The Little Red Book) & Other Works

“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

Love Dark Love Is Pieces Gold Shining Carrie Stitches Embroidery Shining Out

Book:Hannah Coulter: A Novel

Source: Hannah Coulter: A Novel

“My father once nearly came to blows with a female dinner guest about whether a particular patch of embroidery was fuchsia or magenta. But the infinite gradations of color in a fine sunset - from salmon to canary to midnight blue - left him wordless.”

Father Left Particular Color Fine Female Infinite Blue Blow Dinner Sunset Guests Midnight Patches Salmon Canaries Embroidery Magenta Dinner Guests Midnight Blue

Author:Alison Bechdel

“Thanks to His Majesty," the magus said, and my father seemed startled at the correction but not displeased. He looked thoroughly satisfied and very much like Ina when she has all her embroidery threads arranged to her satisfaction. He looked so pleased that I checked over my shoulder to see if there might be someone else behind me who had drawn his attention.”

Ifs Said Might Father Behinds Attention Satisfaction Shoulders Satisfied Thanks Thread Majesty Corrections Embroidery

Author:Megan Whalen Turner

“Four people wheel out a huge wedding cake from a side room. Most of the guests back up, making way for this rarity, this dazzling creation with blue-green, white-tipped icing waves swimming with fish and sailboats, seals and sea flowers. But I push my way through the crowd to confirm what I knew at first sight. As surely as the embroidery stitches in Annie's gown were done by Cinna's hand, the frosted flowers on the cake were done by Peeta's.”

Source: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)

“I can smell the smoke now. I can see tendrils of it comin' up between the cracks in the shrikin' floorboards. There she is, calmly taking down the framed examples of fine embroideries, samplers, and needlework from teh hallway wall and tucking them under her arm. "Mistress! Come on! You've got to leave!" She calmly turns and faces me. "Why?" she asks. "The British are coming?" "Only one, Mistress," I say”

I Can Faces Turns Asks Example Wall Arms Fine British Smell Smoke Cracks Mistress Framed Hallways Embroidery Needlework

Author:L.A. Meyer

“She sifted, sighed, and stared up at the ceiling, trying to think about anything but Lord Maccoon, her current predicament, or Lord Akeldama's safety. Which meant she could do nothing but reflect on the complex plight of her mama's more recent embroidery project. Thins, in itself, was a worse torture than any her captors could devise.”

Thinking Trying Lord Projects Safety Complexes Currents Torture Mama Ceilings Predicaments Plight Embroidery

Author:Gail Carriger

“We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas--stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.”

Stories Memories Color Painting Ready Drama Essence Tunes Bows Canvas Ribbons Celtic Embroidery

Book:Frank Delaney's The Ireland Novels 3-Book Bundle: Tipperary, Shannon, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show

Source: Frank Delaney's The Ireland Novels 3-Book Bundle: Tipperary, Shannon, Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show

“It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.”

Thinking Difficult Break Habit Complexes Thread New Thought Abnegation Tugging Embroidery New Habits

Book:The Divergent Series Complete Collection: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant

Source: The Divergent Series Complete Collection: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant

“Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery.”

Children Life Is Time Taken Rose Patterns My Children Life Is Like Needles Sewing Stitches Quilts Embroidery Needlework Quilting

Book:Guardian Angel

Source: Guardian Angel

“Helda's been trying to impress me with the embroidery on the sheets. One more minute and I thought I might use them to hang myself." "My mother did the embroidery," Bittterblue said. Katsa clapped her mouth shut and glared at Helda. "Thank you, Helda, for mentioning that detail.”

Trying Said Use Might Mother Minutes Mouths Details Impress Sheets Embroidery Katsa Might Use

Author:Kristin Cashore

“You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters — all that matters, really is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women , art, success — is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.”

Thinking Want Kind Art Matter Waiting Mistake Consciousness Conditions Excuse What You Want Enormous What Matters Canvas Embroidery

Author:Albert Camus

“It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.”

Men Mind Shows Home Known Virtue Honor Every Man Occasional Benevolence Felicity Embroidery

Author:Samuel Johnson

“With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head, And every flower that sad embroidery wears.”

Flower Pensive Embroidery Pansies

Author:John Milton

“Do not conceive that fine Clothes make fine Men, any more than fine feathers make fine Birds. A plain genteel dress is more admired and obtains more credit than lace and embroidery in the Eyes of the judicious and sensible.”

Men Character Eye Fine Clothes Bird Dresses Credit Sensible Feathers Lace Embroidery Fine Feathers

Book:The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States

Source: The Life of General Washington: First President of the United States

“Using my own hand as a base material, I considered it a canvas upon which I stitched into the top layer of skin using thread to create the appearance of an incredibly work worn hand. By using the technique of embroidery, which is traditionally employed to represent femininity and applying it to the expression of its opposite, I hope to challenge the pre-conceived notion that 'women's work' is light and easy. Aiming to represent the effects of hard work arising from employment in low paid 'ancillary' jobs, such as cleaning, caring and catering, all traditionally considered to be 'women's work'.”

“I began to know my story then. Like everybody's, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”

Knows Way Enough Stories Together Girl Force Dark Love Is Grief Pieces Bears Gold Shining Absence Carrie Thread Stitches Embroidery Shining Out

Author:Wendell Berry

“Now the Earth with many flowers puts on her spring embroidery”

Earth Flower Spring Embroidery

Book:Lyrics in the Original Greek

Source: Lyrics in the Original Greek

“My go-to gifts are scarves from my friend Matin Maulawizada's nonprofit organization, Afghan Hands, which supports disenfranchised women in Afghanistan. In exchange for their beautiful embroidery, the women are given financial aid and classes in math and literacy. The scarves are all stunning and one of a kind.”

“None of us can be proof against the influences that proceed from the persons he associates with. Wherefore, in books and men, let us look out for the best society, that which yields a bracing and wholesome influence. We all know the person for whose company we are the better, though the talk is only about fishing or embroidery.”

Knows Men Looks Persons Book Company Influence Proof Fishing Yield Associates Embroidery

Book:The Original Home School Series

Source: The Original Home School Series

“Success is not fame or money or the power to bewitch. it is to have created something valuable from your own individuality and skill a garden, an embroidery, a painting, a cake, a life.”

Painting Words Of Wisdom Fame Skills Garden Individuality Valuable Cake Embroidery

Author:Charlotte Gray

“In the theatre, words are eighty to eighty-five percent of the importance of what is happening to you for your comprehension. In film, words are about twenty percent. It's a different figure, but it's almost an opposite ratio. For the words are only a little bit of embroidery, a little bit of lacework.”

Littles Different Film Bits Five Figures Little Bit Happenings Percent Opposites Importance Twenties Theatre Eighty Comprehension Ratios Embroidery

Author:Nicholas Ray

“Although the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know, by faith, that on the other side of the embroidery there is a crown.”

Knows Life Inspirational Faith Sides Positive Inspirational Life Positivity Optimistic Positive Attitude Thread Crowns Knots Positive Inspirational Embroidery Threads Of Life

Book:Tramp for the Lord: The Story that Begins Where The Hiding Place Ends

Source: Tramp for the Lord: The Story that Begins Where The Hiding Place Ends

“When we put the antlers on the model and then draped over it the lace embroidery that we had made, we had to poke them through a £2,000 piece of work. But then it worked because it looks like she's rammed the piece of lace with her antlers. There's always spontaneity. You've got to allow for that in my shows.”

Looks Made Shows Pieces Models Over It Spontaneity Lace Poke Embroidery Antlers

Author:Alexander McQueen

“When I'm not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery. When I'm not plunging into the past, tweaking, or embroidering, I'm reading books about history, computers, or embroidery.”

Writing Book Past Reading Computer Reading Books Embroidery

Author:Lynn Abbey

“I made my song a coat Covered with embroideries Out of old mythologies From heel to throat But the fools caught it, Wore it in the world's eyes As though they'd wrought it. Song, let them take it, For there's more enterprise In walking naked.”

World Made Eye Song Fool Walking Caught Mythology Naked Enterprise Covered Throat Heels Coats Embroidery

Author:William Butler Yeats

“And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything.”

Giving Believe Stills Matter Names Creation Eternal Illusion Absolutes Infinite Cosmos Atoms Void Nothingness Extensions Dense Inconsistency Embroidery

Book:The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before