How I felt in Embroidery addiction and ended making a living of what I truly love.

Hi there, I just wanted to tell you Melarise Embroidery story and origins! I know marketing advices say newsletter should be short but I swear this is the only long mail you will receive from me and it is to be enjoyed with a tea or coffee :)

I am Claire-Mélody Cascail aka Melarise, born and raised in New Caledonia (yes, in the middle of Pacific Ocean) leaving now in sunny Barcelona and wishing to see the whole world.

Always creating. Find Barbie and Ken naked staring at the stars…

The origin

I am not that kind of embroiderer that started from childhood, I mean, I used to do some petit point but never really finished any piece and always ended with thousand of knots behind.

I have been a Graphic designer and Illustrator for more than 10 years but then, Embroidery appeared and crushed everything on its way.

Can you relate?

That was in 2013. I sometime miss pure illustration and graphic design orders, but I can't stop thinking that in some way, they were just arming me with necessary skills to get where I am now: a Cross stitch Patterns Designer.

At the beginning I was only designing for embroideries to be gifted to beloved ones (the first was for my ex mother in law and the second was actually the Dwight Silence of the lambs scene one, for my ex, so kind of my older and first bizarre design although I only decided to share it recently).

I used to participate in collective exhibitions and I started feeling that I could express my ideas better with cross stitch. People actually bought my pieces so I decided to open my Etsy shop in 2014 with some embroidered pin buttons and cross stitch kits and in 2015 I had my first solo exhibition. That means creating around 20 pieces so… One year embroidering at home and not seeing any human... I loved it! #introvert XD

The shop was working well but I realised I didn't really enjoy embroidering two times the same design. When I was enjoying the most and entering in the flow was designing patterns and embroidering them for the first time. I then decided to focus all my activity on that.

My studio in the middle of the Last Batch of Kits Storm :'(

I am self-taught in embroidery and marketing but this adventure makes me feel so complete. I love seeing the collection and the community growing!

Creativity is my religion

I strongly believe that embroidery is a kind of meditation. I need at least one hour a day. The days I can't spend time on it, I redirect all my creativity to Dreyma, an electronic pop rock surf experimental music duo I have with my best friend Cris (who is also my special pattern tester :)

I have created those stickers for a festival we played recently: Monkey Week, all their promo was made in cross stitch! It worths the look :)

My dream would be able to just wake up in the tour bus, design a new pattern every day and embroidery orders in the evening. Have a gig somewhere nice and eat ramen every night. I love too much my full time job to quit for now but that's another story. I know I'll get there! Don't you feel it's so hard to stop embroidering? That you know you need to go to bed but…

One more row?

Make a difference

One of the best feeling and what motivates me the most of this adventure is when I create and share a pattern that is really like… Specific. And I feel like nobody will understand or like it. And booooom: best seller. Makes me feel like having friends all around the world I could laugh with! It happened with the No imagination house (I believe in Phoebe Buffay) and same with Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott's ones. It’s amazing. Same happens with the custom patterns: I love creating something really special like the pet portrait or the baby ultrasound and think about the person who will spend hours embroidering with love. It has no price.

Friends TV show: The One with the Dollhouse (1997)

I try to create what I would have liked to find when I started: original, simple and colourful patterns with no more than 20 colours so you don’t have to sacrifice on your month food budget to get your threads. I just want them to be different and want to thank you because every purchase is a “You did it” to me.

Although we would all love to get the full DMC collection XD Beautiful image without the meme face is from ©El blog de Dmc

No fear

Finally: in 2019 I made the step. I quitted my office job and decided to give it a try to the creator life. I am not saying it is easy, everything is so uncertain and my product is quite niche, I mean: how to find people that like The Office AND Cross Stitch for example? Well, they exist and they are you, and you make me so happy everyday. 

I am proud of how I spend the biggest part of my days and strongly believe that this is just the beggining.

So, nice to e-meet you and again: thank you.

Feel free to say hello, ask questions about Etsy or embroidery, give feedback and share ideas, must see series, movies, music. Anything that will feed my inspiration monster.

Enjoy and stitch all the things!