All my life I’ve made things besides drawings and paintings.

Sculptures, embroidery, costume jewelry, accessories, bricolage and mixed media art. For fun.

I’d never sold of any of it til this year, when people kind of insisted on buying my embroidered bugs.

So I decided, what the hell, when I make something for myself, I’ll make a few extra.

Of course, this means my pretty much deranged obsession with insects as a visual motif is no longer on the dl.

And you will all know I wanted Disco Trilobites and Cthulhu wine charms enough to make them.

But maybe you want some too?

A few years back I participated in an event with Madison Young’s Femina Potens gallery. It was a DIY workshop where we sat in a garden behind a yoga place on Haight St. and did handwork. There was a wonderful redwork artist there who refreshed my memory on how to embroider, something I did a lot as a little hippie teenager. So when I shut my portraiture business down, I took up handwork again. This time I had a wonderful helper: Pinterest. Reference photos, tutorial gifs, inspiration boards. Heaven.

Here are some of the things I’ve made- the octopus is the oldest and is all wrinkly cause I hadn’t got the hang of using the hoop yet.

Embroidery by Suzanne Forbes