Melinda Barta hopes to teach the gospel of needlework and creativity to a younger generation that didn’t experience the daisy-chain-stitched jeans of the 1970s.
After all, at the tender age of 24, she doesn’t remember those slightly off-kilter hearts or peace signs the cool girls stitched prominently on their rear pants pockets.
Her designs are fresh and functional in “Hip to Stitch: 20 Contemporary Projects Embellished with Thread” (Interweave Press, $19.95) – no hearts, no peace signs, no daisy chains.
“I wanted to do something that doesn’t just hang on the wall. Something you can give as a gift,” says the Fort Collins resident. “I wanted people not to be intimidated or not to be bored.”
So the book contains trendy hair ties in modern patterns and bright colors, chicken-and-egg napkin rings and a pouch for a guitar pick. She bends to traditional projects too, but gives them a twist: aprons stitched with cocktail glasses and a baby bib crawling with cute bugs.
Following her passion for an old-world craft has turned the Colorado State University fiber-arts major into something of a celebrity. The next few months are filled with book signings and television appearances, including one June 2, when she is a judge on the new, wacky “Craft Corner Death Match” on the Style Network.
In the spoof, two crafters compete against each other and the Craft Lady of Steel for prizes and cash. Embroidery wasn’t an ingredient of this show: Barta judged duct-tape purses, soap-on-a-rope jewelry and iPod cozies each made in 10 minutes.
For Teen magazine, Barta created a pattern of irises stitched from the hemline to the knee on a pair of jeans. The pattern debuts in the fall issue of the magazine, perfect timing given the wave of embroidery fashions in stores – especially stitched jeans. (Everything is cyclical.)
These days, Barta can’t tell you how many hours it takes to finish her projects. She measures time by the number of rental movies she has “watched” while shaping vibrant threads into the tiny knots, lines and curved twists of embroidery stitches.
She does know, however, exactly how long it has taken to produce her just-released first book – two years from proposal to publication.
Barta’s love of threads began at age 7 when her family, who still lives in Evergreen, cross-stitched items for Christmas gifts. The threads, in countless colors, fascinated her.
“We’d buy floss to make friendship bracelets, and I wanted every color,” she says. At CSU she worked toward becoming a graphic designer. But in one class, when she was required to incorporate embroidery with other fiber techniques, she knew she had found a bit of nirvana.
A busy author
She interned at PieceWork magazine, where she now is project editor. Many of her original designs appear in the magazine, including this month’s issue. Her wedding-cake-knife sheath, stitched with delicate blue forget-me-nots, is a present for her sister, who will marry in July.
In 2003, she was encouraged to draw up a proposal for a book; after it was accepted by Interweave Press, the umbrella organization for PieceWork, the real work began.
At 5 a.m. every morning, you would find Barta in a coffee shop, getting caffeinated and writing. She would head into the PieceWork offices, where she would weed through reader project submissions, deal with contracts, and edit stories and instructions.
At night, she would stitch projects for her book on the sofa in front of the television. On weekends, driving to the mountains to ski, threads and an embroidery hoop were her close companions. “I did a lot of (projects) in the car … when I had a chauffeur. I remember what trip I was on when I was stitching each project,” she says.
Barta credits two people who helped shape her visions and designs. One is a CSU art professor who taught many of Barta’s classes.
“She’s very appreciative of the tradition of embroidery,” says Tom Lundberg. “I don’t think a lot of people who don’t work with their hands recognize the quality of such items.”
In our culture, he says, people buy cheap goods, and they don’t experience the visual and tactile nature of crafts, the kind of quiet one gets when “they stop rushing and catch what’s going on in your mind. Melinda’s book will teach people those possibilities.”
The second person who influenced Barta was Renie Breskin Adams. They met at a crafts school in North Carolina and became working partners and friends. Adams’ work, much of it whimsical, pictoral embroidered art, is exhibited nationally, including at the Smithsonian, and internationally.
“She is full of personality and humor,” says Adams of Barta. “When I first met her, I thought she was hot stuff.”
Artistic freedom
Embroidery today is “less about learning traditional stitches in a book and lining them up like little soldiers and more about freedom in composing and expressing personal objectives,” says Adams.
“When Melinda does her own thing, (the pieces) are so expressive and visually satisfying, and her personality and attitude came through in her book.”
Barta is a little overwhelmed by the attention a new author receives, but she’s willing to trade her anonymity to help teach others – even those who have only used a needle and thread to reattach errant buttons – about “making crafts, sitting down and using your hands.”
On free weekends, she and her boyfriend, Jason Waldron, head for the mountains. She loves the outdoors and draws project inspiration from the tones, hues and inhabitants of nature. Sometimes the two take out their 16-foot-canoe after work, paddling across a nearby lake to dine on the other side.
Always, she’s thinking about new project designs and different ways of mixing colors and patterns.
Once the frenzy subsides in the fall, she’ll craft another proposal for another book of embroidery. But right now, she’ll try to get back some quiet time.
She’ll sit on that little sofa in her office, surrounded by plastic cases of thread bobbins in every color, watch James Bond or “Napoleon Dynamite” and stitch.
Staff writer Cynthia Pasquale can be reached at 303-820-1722 or cpasquale@denverpost.com.
