Signs of February- National Embroidery Month

February is iconic for hearts, flowers, chocolates and….embroidery! It’s National Embroidery Month (or 
International, depending on how far-flung your interests are), a time when stitchy types celebrate the art of embroidery by hand or machine.

But back to National Embroidery Month..would you believe there’s a (loose) Hip Stitch connection to how 
this stitchy celebration got started? Here’s the backstory: In the mid-1990s, Hip Stitch staffer Melissa Maher was leading the merry band of writers at Stitches Magazine, a trade magazine for the commercial 
embroidery industry. Melissa says her staff was talking about the various promotional days to gain public 
notice, like National Pickle Day. (Which just happens to be Nov. 14, btw.)  However, there wasn’t anything 
for embroidery.

“Fact. So we started one,” she says. “We just proclaimed it, publicized it, and it was a done deal.” The 
magazine kept it alive with special features each year, but others, like hand embroidery queen Jenny Hart 
of Sublime Stitching, soon picked up on it.  Last year, Sublime Stitching  gave away more than 300 teaching kits to people who promised to teach someone else to embroider. This year, she continues the teach-it 
theme with free patterns.