thickness. The design included the word Entre To decorate her skateboard, Jenny Hart uses leather lace surrounded by curlicues. “It wasn’t a project you for the border. In traditional embroidery, this stitch is cuddle up with in an armchair,” she says, referring ^{known as a running stitch.} to the awkward size and weight of her “canvas.” “It was more like a hardware project.” So what does Hart see on her artistic horizon?

Photograph by Philip Heying

Another off-the-wall project Hart recently She says she wants to embroider a giant sculpture completed was her leather lace-embroidered to give people another perspective. “It’s not about skateboard. For this, she drilled holes where the making a pretty object, but more about getting needle would normally intersect the fabric, and people to look at it really, really close up to see the used feather, whip, running, and straight stitches essential elements of it.” to decorate the underside of the deck. Last spring, Without giving away too much, a couple of her the board was auctioned off as part of a benefit to big ideas include embroidering a freestanding wall fund a new skate park in Knoxville, Tenn. with enormous rope, and embroidering a huge

Perhaps one of Jenny’s more bizarre projects is panel of metal with wires. “I really want to do a Oh Unicorn, a portrait of a man kissing a unicorn- big honkin’ piece. I want to spend a good year or horned woman, stitched on deerskin canvas, using two working on something large.” She says there’s human hair for thread. something hidden about the finer details of em-

Hart used her own hair as well as human hair broidery, and with these large-scaled pieces, she extensions she bought at a wig shop. Soft deer- hopes to unveil — and at the same time magnify skin, which she compares to a shammy, was a lot — some of its secrets. × more difficult to embroider than she’d predicted. To embroider your own skateboard, see page 121. “I was really naïve. I thought this was going to be a wonderful, beautiful experience, but it wasn’t easy.” Carla Sinclair is the editor-in-chief of CRAFT magazine.