“You have these designers that are coming out embroidering subject matter that wasn’t something that was embroidered by our grandparents back even 30 or 40 years ago,” she said. “They’re really pushing the boundaries as far as how they can make materials work and freshen up what that subject matter looks like.
Iqbal’s theories for why fiber arts are taking off? There’s a way to reference fun pop culture and an underlying theme of sustainability with a rising interest in mending and upcycled materials.recalls cross-stitching with her grandma growing up. She returned to fiber arts as an adult with embroidery.
“Embroidery was something that I could do in my apartment, and it didn’t take up very much space and I could put it down easily and come back to it. So that kind of hooked me back in.”Advertisement She likes including affirmations in her work like “It’s probably fine” — which is something she grew up saying as a camp counselor.“It’s something I do as kind of a meditative practice to decompress. Like, I already have something in mind and since it is so time consuming, you can fill a shape for quite a long time. I’ll do it watching TV or just to decompress in the evening.”
Iqbal calls embroidery a slow craft, one that requires a lot of time to develop a skill set. She’s excited that fiber arts is no longer being labeled as a hobby only for grandmas.“It really built momentum over the past years with this sort of resurgence of taking an old craft and how can we spin it in a new direction.”