De Borduurschool: Theodoor Adriaans

“Let’s see, what have we got here.” Theodoor Adriaans rummages through a box in their studio, located in a former school in Utrecht. Embroidered patches and garments hang on the walls, in-between tall shelving units filled with rows of books. On the corner of a soft couch lies a bodice embroidered in the style of Marker regional costume. From the box, Theodoor pulls jumpers with embellished brand logos and one with the face of American trans rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, done in hundreds of tiny stitches. Theodoor did the embroidery themselves.

They are wearing a pink jumper today, covered in custom felt-tip texts and drawings. Outspoken clothing is a trademark of Theodoor’s. They are an artist, filmmaker and craftsperson. Under the name Theodorus Johannes, they work on exhibitions and publications on fashion and crafts, and a video series on regional costumes. They also teach embroidery courses and are the founder of the Queer Needlework Circle, a crafts group where queer people can get together to craft – and talk about what is on their minds.

How did the Queer Needlework Circle come about?

“Many queer people do not conform to the norms of this society. It is important to be amongst each other every now and then – to have a space where one doesn’t have to explain anything, where one can just be. Crafting, for us, is really an excuse to get together. I came up with the idea for the Queer Needlework Circle together with Hans Hutting, just before corona. Because of corona, it took a while before we got together for the first time – that only happened a year later.”

“Since then, the Queer Needlework Circle has been meeting regularly, always in a different area of the Netherlands. As a consequence, different people join us each time, which is fun. We always choose a different needlework technique to work with. Everyone brings a drink and snack, and then we spend the whole afternoon crafting, exchanging tips, and chatting.”

What makes needlework a good activity for such a gathering?

“Needlework connects. It brings people together who are different, but also share something: their interest in crafting. That shared interest makes it easy to engage with each other. When you are crafting you are enjoying yourself, and at the same time you can talk and listen. Before you know it, the conversation turns from embroidery to other, more personal subjects. Mental health, or what it feels like to be transitioning as a trans person.”

“In needlework, you also need each other: to learn new techniques, or to borrow a pair of scissors. That also creates connection. I once deliberately put down too few scissors during a session, so that the participants had to ask each other for them.”

What does queer needlework look like? Does it have its own style?

“Queer needlework, as far as I’m concerned, is defined more by the person making it than by its looks. But it definitely has its own symbolism. Take the pink triangle, for example, or the pansy. These are symbols that were used in the past to denigrate the queer community: the pink triangle was the sign the Nazis used for gay prisoners during World War II, and ‘pansy’ was a swear word. Those very symbols are now used by the queer community itself, to commemorate that unpleasant history and to replace the negative meaning with a positive one.”

“Queer, or actually the verb queering, also means to deliberately make something look weird or eccentric: to deliberately create chaos, because life is chaos. For embroidery, that means: it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just stitch.”

How did you learn to embroider yourself?

“I was always good at using needle and thread, I made my own clothes. At one point I thought: I could make myself a new suit every week, but then my wardrobe will get too large at some point. What would happen if I’d just spend more time on a single garment?”

“Around the same time, I participated in an embroidery masterclass about techniques from the Dutch village of Marken, taught by Margreet Beemsterboer, organised by Crafts Council Netherlands. That was the first time I embroidered and noticed: wow, I don’t just like it, I’m quite good at it, too.”

“I got better at embroidery by doing it a lot. I made an embroidered armour, based on a design by Dries van Noten, and I recreated an embroidered bodice from the regional costume tradition of Marken. I bought it when I was working on the documentary series ‘Community Dressing’, about Dutch regional costumes. I studied the techniques, and figured out how I could recreate them in a way that would not deviate too much from the original look. I was a bit too impatient so I came up with some stitches here and there to work quicker.” Laughing: “People on Marken saw that immediately when I showed them the bodice. ‘Do not fool Marken’, they said.”

“I would do it differently now, I would want to get much closer to the original. It’s someone’s treasured cultural heritage you’re working with, after all.”

What does embroidery mean to you?

“When I see an embroidered garment, I know how much time and attention has gone into it. A garment like that really lives, it absorbs life. Take the embroidered regional costume of Marken: that clothing is like a passport. You can tell from the costume and the embroidery what age someone is, what profession, whether someone is married or in mourning, et cetera.”

“Compared to Marken a hundred years ago, our clothes have become sloppy and careless, I think. We still convey social status with our clothes, but no longer through such clear symbols. To me that is a downgrade, because it means there is less connection between people. That connection is precisely what I am looking for.”

“I wear eye-catching clothes, which is why people often address me on the street. They say that I look beautiful, for example. My clothes evoke something. I’m always seeking a reaction. I want to show something, be seen, engage in conversation, connect.”

“Sometimes the comments are less nice. The other day, someone shouted ‘hey gay’ from a car window while I was waiting at the traffic light. Someone else asked me: ‘Are you really going to work looking like that?’ That sort of thing. I started drawing pictures of those situations. The clothes in those pictures I embroider by hand on fabric. My drawings are sometimes hopeful, sometimes grim. I want to allow people to see that I also experience pain.”

“I don’t make those embroideries on clothes, but on flat pieces of historical linen. I would like to be seen more as a visual artist. A bit like Bas Kosters, who makes work with textiles that is festive and melancholical at the same time.”

What else are you currently working on?

“I teach a course in basic embroidery techniques, and I learnt machine embroidery from Martine van ‘t Hul. I want to be able to combine machine embroidery and hand embroidery. What attracts me to machine embroidery is mainly the speed. Hand embroidery takes a really long time. And I find it interesting to explore how I can embroider by machine while making the result look like handcraft. I like playing with technique. Often that’s just why I do it: to play.”