De Borduurschool: Majo van der Woude

Within embroidery, there are specialists: people dedicated to a particular technique, material or type of imagery. And then there are people like Majo van der Woude who, on a wintery afternoon, is sitting on the other side of a large table in her Utrecht studio. Against the wall are cabinets full of fabrics and threads, and books on all kinds of embroidery techniques: from Swedish to Chinese and from eighteenth-century to contemporary. ‘No, I wouldn’t really call myself and specialist,’ she says. ‘There are a few techniques that I am good at and that I also like. But basically I do a bit of everything.’

Yet Majo is definitely an expert in one specific aspect of embroidery: sharing and transferring knowledge and experience. Among other things, Majo gives embroidery workshops, and facilitates embroidery projects for artists and museums. Apart from knowledge of embroidery, this also requires knowledge of people: you need to know exactly what an embroiderer needs to be able to continue. And what brings pleasure to yourself and others,’ says Majo. Because that is what embroidery is about in the end, she finds.

How did you get into embroidery?

‘As a child I lived in the Dutch province of Zeeland, and I had a great-aunt in Maarssen, close to the city of Utrecht. From the age of eleven, I went to see her every summer for five or six weeks. She was a cross-stitch embroiderer, and always gave me a little embroidery project to amuse myself with during the summer weeks. That’s where it started.’

‘This great-aunt has been quite influential in my life in general. She worked in a library. When I was with her, we would always go and buy books to put in the library. Because of her, I did not only start embroidering, but I also went on to study publishing after high school.’

‘After college, I got a job in publishing. Embroidery fell to the background, but in 1999 I had a burn-out. At that time, my mother gave me a book on samplers from Zeeland. I started copying them. Embroidery, especially sampler embroidery, is great to do when you have a burn-out. A sampler consists of little patterns, and every time you finish a piece it makes you feel good. That works perfectly when you’re overworked or when you’re not feeling well.’

‘Those samplers were all in cross-stitch, and after a while I wanted to explore other techniques as well. I started looking for ways to train myself and met embroidery expert Margreet Beemsterboer. I learned a lot from her. I also went on all kinds of embroidery trips to Denmark, England and Scotland, and followed online embroidery courses in Australia and America. Even now, I am still learning new things every day.’

You now teach embroidery courses yourself. How did you start doing that?  

‘I continued in the publishing business until 2010, as a marketeer and manager. I worked mostly on non-fiction books, including many textbooks for higher education. I just find the transmission of knowledge a really fun and interesting phenomenon. I think that’s also where my love of teaching came from.’

What courses do you teach?

‘All sorts of things: free stitching, visible mending, sashiko…. There are really only a few forms of embroidery that I don’t use myself and which I also do not teach. These include tambour embroidery, luneville embroidery and gold embroidery. For those, I prefer to refer to someone else.’

Why don’t you use those techniques yourself?

‘I do not enjoy them as much as other techniques. Meanwhile, joy and pleasure in embroidery are important to me. I also want to convey that pleasure to my students. For that reason, I am also not very strict in my teaching – students really don’t have to perform a technique my way.’

‘I always offer different ways of doing something anyway, because everyone learns in a different way. It depends not only on the level of the student, but also on the way someone thinks. An artistic embroiderer thinks very differently from someone who is used to very precise and traditional cross-stitch embroidery.’

What kind of people come to the courses?

‘I offer a wide range of courses, so the people who come to me are also diverse. Younger, older, people looking for company, people looking for peace and quiet, people who want to learn techniques or create free work. The group of students is also becoming more diverse. There are still few men, though.’

‘The demand for the courses is high. Many people rediscovered needlework during the Covid years, and so appreciation for it has grown. Needlework is also becoming increasingly popular in the context of sustainability. And it is a counterpoint to the digital culture we live in. Everything you scroll past disappears, it is not tangible. That’s precisely why people enjoy making something tangible these days, like embroidery.’

You still enjoy learning yourself, you said. How do you decide what is the next thing you want to learn?

‘That always has to do with what I am teaching others. To give an example: since a few years, I have been organising so-called ‘summer weeks’. These are two course weeks in August. Each week there are five course days. On every course day, we focus on a different technique within a specific theme: the sea, for example. Then I look for techniques that fit within the theme, and I make embroidery samples. In doing so, I look for things that are also new to me. I learn from that.’

‘If, while making the examples, it turns out that I can’t master a technique, or I don’t like it anyway, I skip it and look for something else. Because if I can’t express fun in making something, how am I supposed to convey it to students?’

You also do projects for artists.

‘True, I have worked with Sara Vrugt and Marinus Boezem, among others. Sara Vrugt’s project involved more than a thousand embroiderers making a forest together out of thread. I guided the embroiderers during the making process, taught them the embroidery stitches and checked the quality of their embroidery. With Marinus Boezem, I worked on the project ‘Gothic Gestures’. This involved embroidering a map of the church in cross-stitch on site during one of Marinus’ exhibitions in the Oude Kerk. As embroidery project leader, I managed a team of over sixty volunteers.’

‘I also occasionally work for museums: for the ‘Haute Bordure’ exhibition at the Fries Museum, for example, I made videos about embroidery techniques.’

What makes an assignment interesting for you?

‘I find an assignment interesting if it revolves around embroidery, of course. And if it involves something I don’t feel quite sure about, or something I’ve never done before, like making those videos for the Fries Museum. That means there is also something for me to learn.’

What’s the most fun assignment you’ve ever done?

Difficult to say. But if I have to choose one, the one with Marinus Boezem. Actually, as embroiderers, we were a living work of art, sitting in the middle of the church embroidering on a 3.5-metre by 5.5-metre rug in the shape of a cross. At one point, several embroiderers had to embroider in the middle at the same time, and really had to sit very close to each other. Some people didn’t get along well at first, but eventually everyone was embroidering in the same rhythm.’

‘We embroidered mostly in the afternoon and the commission lasted from November to April, so we saw all kinds of different light in the church. Sometimes it’s not just the embroidery itself, but also the things around it that are very special.’

What would you recommend to people who want to start embroidery now?

‘Make sure you enjoy it. That is the most important thing – not that your embroidery is perfect, or meets all kinds of standards. In addition, teach yourself to look at your own work from a distance. Many older women come to me who want to do everything perfectly. If a stitch is one millimetre off, they want to take it out and redo it. I tell them: don’t. Put other stitches next to it and you won’t see it anymore. Everyone you show it to will still think it looks beautiful – it’s your handwork, after all.’