Exploring Thread Arts and the Art of Making with Danielle Clough | Blog

What are your thoughts when you hear "thread art" as well as "embroidery"?

Your mind may conjure up images of embroidery hoops, trips to the craft store for a flutter through the colourful bags of thread. You might remember someone close and dear to you who started an embroidery business as a hobby.

Meet Danielle Clough

Danielle Clough is a multidisciplinary creative powerhouse - from thread arts to photography as well as design and much more. Growing up in Cape Town, she studied graphic design and direction in the fields of art and design prior to pursuing art of visual and the tactile as a career. After a brief period of success in creating the visuals for live events for the likes of the Allah Lahs, Black Sun Empire, and more the artist turned her focus towards digital design as well as "thing making."

Learn the Thread Arts through Danielle Clough

The art of thread painting: Contemporary embroidery for beginners          Learn the Class

No matter how you've come to know Danielle Clough, her work is a powerful one. You can ask her 200,000 Instagram fans who want to see her latest creations including hummingbird-themed portraits, to the most perfect recreation of Cher from Clueless (on plaid, of course).

What exactly is Thread Arts?

In simple terms, it is anything that you can create using thread. Think: traditional embroidery, thread painting, string art or thread crochet. It can also be a the drawing of a sewing machine. All of these media employ the same essential tools: thread, needles, and some surface no matter if it's a conventional Hoop or an unconventional multimedia piece.

One of the most exciting aspects of thread art as Danielle considers she believes that the possibilities of the art is endless. If there's those who are creating and motivated to learn or improve and discover, we'll continue to see increasing creative outputs made from threads, needle, as well as an inspired creator. With such a limited set of tools and a myriad of options to choose from, thread arts is the ideal career choice for creative experts and novices alike. You can use it to uplevel or simply enjoy a moment to be at the present moment.

"Just the act of making can be so relaxing, and it's so present that, even if you create things that end up in the bottom of your shoebox time you spent making it is gonna be valuable."    Danielle Clough

How Crafting Became Creative Freedom

"There's the superpower which you can attain when you've got a strong attention span and can focus on your own life." Danielle notes.

The key to unlocking this superpower is the easy but powerful craft of staying present to the moment of your craft while minimizing the noise outside. It's also something that becomes more easy to master when you start to consider yourself as a craftsperson.

"The title craftsman gives you just infinite freedom to create. If it's crochet, knitting, decoupage, the work is just a process of creating. It's during the process of making as a craftsperson or a creator that we really learn the most and we can be the most self-reflective."

Removing the creative pressure

If you're considering starting crafting, Danielle has just the guidance you need. Creative people often find it difficult to create and staying focused, as well as sharing their work for validation to the world. It doesn't matter if it's Instagram or TikTok or sharing as a piece of your portfolio The act of making for publication or sharing isn't easy. It is better to Danielle offers the suggestion that you simply make for yourself.

"We place on ourselves a lot of pressure to produce and to share , be productive and share. We'reconstantly looking for confirmation. So everything we create, we have this expectation of putting it out to the world. If we get back to the essence of why we make and create an item for yourself that helps to rekindle that spark you were experiencing prior to. And hopefully, you know the fire will grow."

The idea doesn't have to be a huge artwork - it could be as simple as drawing onto a piece of paper the vision for your artwork. It's an important step in the right direction to unlocking your creative dreams.

Create with Thread Arts

Craft along with Danielle Clough

Buy an DMC kit to kick off your thread-arts journey.          Shop the Kit