Broderiakademin | Sweden’s Embroidery Guild

Last year there was an embroidery exhibition in town, and when visiting it I found out Sweden has an Embroidery Guild open to everyone, called Broderiakademin! How amazing is that? I had no idea groups like this excised. Where I live there is even a local group meeting every month!

When I joined I was not sure if this would be for me (yes I am very much the youngest in the group), but every time I go I come home inspired and full of creative energy from the embroidery ladies. I’ve mentioned the Embroidery group when I wrote about the start up of the Summer Embroidery Project (a last update with images of finished edge, hanger and all will be featured in a blog near you soon… I promise!).

Embroidery Exhibition

Anyway. The exhibition was fantastic and huge – as you can see from the video I just edited and uploaded to youtube. The exhibition really showed how rich this craft is! There is a huge and beautiful verity of methods, stitches, materials and traditions in embroidery. And oh so many fun ways to express yourself with thread. I’m trying out what I would call “mixed media embroidery”, sewing little stitches on fabric painted in acrylic etc. Fun fun fun!

Right now my experiments look like this:

Mixed media embroidery… is that a term? Now it is. I’m in love with sewing.

As I’m now both a part of the magazine editorial staff and elected to be a member of the committee (though I have yet to attend a meeting) I thought I really needed to tell you about this group, especially if any Swedish crafters or embroiderer’s coming by here wanting to belong to a group or find fellowship with other creative souls… Check out Broderiakademin, that’s all I’m saying.

As a member you get a full color much loved magazine about embroidery twice a year. In the magazine you can read about upcoming events, news, contests, books and be inspired by other members and read a few longer articles and interviews!

The first issue that I’ve been involved with came out in December 2009. Yay! I contributed an article about traditional Madonna Embroidery, a book review and a piece about the woman who got the embroidery scholarship last year. The magazine is of course in Swedish and I really enjoyed writing and working with it!

Broderiakademin’s missions statement

The organization Broderiakademin wants to do this, and I fully stand behind Broderiakademin’s “program declaration”. My translation loose translation:

Isn’t that beautiful?

I was checking out UK’s Embroiderers Guild today, to find out if I could translate our group as “guild” and I think I can. So let’s call it Sweden’s Embroidery Guild until someone objects. I think it is. Everyone interested in Embroidery can join a guild. Broderiakademin has members all over Sweden (and Scandinavia), contests, a magazine and local groups meeting in many cities including my hometown.

If you’re a member and happen to be visiting – say hi to me below! Or if you know of great embroidery books or resources, I’d love to know about them… :-) You could grab one of the buttons I just created to link from your homepage or blog… I did these while updating my Link Love Page and making buttons for the DIY Postcard Swap 2010.

Oh, and if you have the time I would love to know what you think of the video I did in Movie Maker (that stupid program, not done for fine tuning…) below. It took for ever to edit this, but I think it’s rather good. Rate it at youtube by clicking the clip, or comment below.

The embroidery pieces in the video are just examples of the exhibition, I couldn’t fit it all in and didn’t want to make it too long. Non of the embroideries in the video are made by me, I just picked the music. ;-)

Maybe I should suggest to the board that they should hire me as their Information Manager and general PR person? What a dream job that would be to me.

What creative groups do you belong to?

You might also want to check out these from the Studio iHanna Shop