Still Loading,
Patience Please

I often feel overwhelmed by the haste of everything. Most people are always doing something and it is almost always something with a goal. It feels like the only time we are doing nothing is when our computer or phone is loading. We are just staring at this buffering sign, waiting, watching it go round and round, waiting for a picture to load… and there is Kylie Jenner, and you are doing something again.
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Of course it wasn’t always like this. When people didn’t have computers they still did something in their free time. One of these things people did were embroidery kits. This is a paint by number kind of idea but the cloth and pattern are separate and in stead of paint you use yarn. You make the stitches according to the pattern and after a lot of time you get a nice image, that you can hang on your wall, or give away as a gift.
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It used to be pretty popular, but no one has time to spend 40 hours on an embroidery piece anymore. It has turned into something mostly older people do. Since it is a hobby mostly done by older people, it is slowly dying. Their eyes get worse, their hands don’t cooperate and in the worse case, the people themselves die. For this reason a lot of unfinished kits end up in second hand stores. They are often only bought for their yarn and will forever remain unfinished.
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So why not finish them? By adding a loading sign, the picture is not unfinished, it’s loading. While we are at it, why not celebrate all micro-moments we spend waiting in front of our screens? I made patterns according to different themes, so you can appreciate doing something useless, that might otherwise become obsolete. All kits are beginner friendly and include all necessities to start, so don’t worry if you have never done this before. So let’s revive a dying craft.

January 2020, Design Academy Eindhoven
Graduation Work

Picture by Femke Reijerman