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Probably the closest Jenny Hart has come to embroidering a cute animal was Elizabeth Taylor's dog. The legendary actress commissioned the Texas stitch artist to embroider a portrait of her dog on a pillow for her bed.
You see, Jenny is not your average embroiderer. The innovative artist has lifted the traditional craft to a whole new level – as an artist and as a businesswoman – and in her work there isn't a bonnet-wearing goose or cotton-tailed rabbit in sight.
Jenny is now internationally known for her embroidered portraits, and she has regular exhibitions at galleries around the US. Her work is in the private collections of Dolly Parton, Marianne Faithfull, Carrie Fisher, Laura Dern, Debbie Reynolds and Tracy Ullman, among others, and various museums and galleries including the Roger Miller Museum in Oklahoma. But it's probably for her embroidery business Sublime Stitching that Jenny is known best.
Sublime Stitching sells an ever-growing range of alternative embroidery patterns the likes of which your grandma has never seen before. As the packaging says, "This Ain't Your Gramma's Embroidery!" Instead, they're contemporary, clever and downright sassy, and make you want to get stitching right away. Each themed package comes with a complete set of conversational instructions [so it's like Jenny's in the room with you], making them ideal for beginners. And each pack has a selection of up to eight designs that can be transferred to fabric, wood, leather and paper.
The Dress Up kit contains patterns for handbags, shoes and a diamond ring; in Camp Out there's a sausage on a fork and a boiling kettle; Krazy Kitchen includes a cupcake and a frying pan on fire; and in Rock 'n Roll there's a drum kit and bolts of lightning. Gothic Grandeur includes a headstone, Country Cool a cactus and one of our favourites, Craftopia, features knitting needles and wool. There's also an Artist Series of designs featuring patterns designed by other artists, plus customisable kits, books, tools, textiles and gifts [hand-stitched cards, handbag mirrors], all sold on sublimestitching.com.
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In setting up Sublime Stitching, Jenny gave new life to an old craft, spawning more interest in embroidery than has been seen for decades. "There's a great appreciation for it [embroidery] going on. I see a whole lot more embroidery now. People are saying embroidery is a really beautiful thing, let's not throw it out, let's keep it alive. We're all enjoying a huge resurgence of interest in it," she says.
Jenny started working with embroidery for her artwork. "I didn't know how to sew or do needlework," she explains. "But I was really interested in art, drawing and painting. When I got older I started taking an interest in hand embroidery and I thought that would be a beautiful medium for large portraits."
At the same time, she wondered what embroidery would be like if you didn't always use it to depict a teddy bear. She asked her mother to teach her stitching, and using her new skills Jenny embroidered a portrait of her mum on a scrap of cotton sheet. "I didn't know if I would like it or even finish it but I became addicted," she says. "It's very, very relaxing, meditative, and I started doing it for about three hours a day and that's how I produced my portraits and artwork.
"Embroidery serves no function; it's all about embellishment. It's the frosting of needle arts and it's almost always secondary to a functional object, for example a pillow. For me it was important to present it on its own, with no purpose. Embroidery is a great mix of art and craft," says Jenny, who grew up reading her brother's comics and thinks the similarly illustrative nature of embroidery is what's attractive to her.
Sublime Stitching was launched in 2001. It took off quickly, with enormous interest from everybody from craft groups to major publishers, and Jenny hasn't looked back. "I'm ambitious for my company. I'd like to see what can be done with it, how far it can go. It's always been my goal to grow it but at its own pace. I just see so many possibilities," says Jenny, who admits to feeling torn between the business and creative aspects of her work.
"It is a tender war," she says. "I get happily absorbed in business or writing my advice column or designing embroidery patterns. When I do feel really torn is when I'm doing my artwork. I have to make time for that. Anyone running a business has to work out how to manage their time, how to give themselves a break, which will ensure you continue enjoying it."
The creative-commercial dilemma is one of the things Jenny talks about with her fellow members of the Austin Craft Mafia [featured in the last issue of Living Creatively], which she co-founded in the early days of Sublime Stitching. That, too, has taken off, and there are now craft mafias all over the US. What will Jenny Hart do next? Whatever it is, we're sure it'll be brilliant.
By Carolyn Ford
Visit Sublime Stitching at flickr
To purchase Sublime Stitching patterns visit amitié
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"I hope she enjoys it," says Jenny of Liz's pooch pillow in an interview with 
