The Tamesis
There are many ways to spend a relaxing Saturday night in the West Village. But on this particular night, instead of grabbing dinner or a drink, I headed to a different event: an embroidery event where West Village Knit & Needle expected a packed house. Still, owner Kiana Malekzadeh graciously let me sit at the Stitch and Sip bar, and for the next two hours the women crowded into the LNS (which, for the uninitiated, is shorthand for “Local Needlepoint Store”) to enjoy free prosecco and two boots of pizza. Everywhere I looked, guests were stitching together hand-painted canvases with candy-colored threads that featured cannoli, bows, or caviar pots that they could one day turn into a patch or a decoration, or a pillow if they felt fancy.
For an embroidery novice like me, it was a shockingly healthy scene for the weekend – even more so considering that most of the attendees were under 30 years old. But for those in the know, it’s no surprise that fiber arts attract such a diverse crowd. A welcome reprieve from upper-class craftsmanship, it’s the latest centuries-old hobby to have a resurgence in popularity among those willing to spend hours sewing by hand and hundreds of dollars buying lessons, canvas and thread to create their own future heirlooms.
Malekzadeh told me that Needlepoint has become so popular in the past few years that the business she originally planned to complete in eight years took only five. In Uptown, Olivia Lipnick, manager of Annie & Co., and Alyssa Hertzig, owner of Rita’s Embroidery Shop, use words like “surge” and “explosion” to describe the recent renaissance. “We can’t stock starter kits fast enough,” Herzig said in remarks Saturday morning. “We might have 30 or 40, and by Monday they’ll be gone.”
While needlepoint may still have established associations, in Herziger’s opinion, old-fashioned charm is the reason for its growing popularity. “We now live in an era [where] Everything is very ephemeral,” explains the self-proclaimed “late-life quilter,” “We no longer write on paper. We don’t send letters. Everything is digital. There are too few physical, tangible memories. But needlepoint is something tangible, something tangible, something you can see, something you can look at. “
As far as craft hobbies go, embroidery might just be one of the first. Centuries before Gen Z began using TikTok to exchange sewing tips and talk about canvas, historians have traced the practice back to ancient Egypt. In the 16th century, it evolved into a favored pastime among European royalty; in the 20th century, it became a major recreational hobby, in part due to its meditative nature. “It’s very relaxing…I call it the adult version of coloring,” Renée Klein, 68, a Greenwich Village native who has been sewing for most of the past 50 years, told me. “The act of pushing the needle through the hole is almost like breathing,” Herziger said. “It goes in and out and really forces you to slow down.”
