Custom ornaments, key fobs, pillows, grad gifts and belts. These are just a few of the needlepoint projects that students and faculty have made for themselves, their families and their friends. While, on the surface, needlepointing looks like a fun and creative way to make unique projects, it also serves a larger purpose of taking crafters off their screens and helping them make deeper connections with their community.
For sophomore Kate Pauley, needlepointing has allowed her to disconnect from her phone and stay in tune with her creative side. Pauley said that she doesn’t even have to decide between spending time on her phone or needlepointing because the answer is obvious.
“I don’t even think about my phone,” Pauley said. “I just want to needlepoint when I get home like I don’t even consider it. [Needlepoint] completely took place of the screen, and it was a really healthy thing.”
Taking time out of her day to concentrate on needlepointing helps Pauley feel relaxed and improves her mental health by alleviating anxiety. Pauley even picked up her needlepoint to deal with her grief after experiencing loss.
“It’s a good escape because when you’re doing [needlepoint], you’re only focusing on that,” Pauley said. “You can’t really, well at least for me, I can’t really think about other stuff, so it kind of takes away from the other stresses that usually would preoccupy your mind.”
In addition to the relaxing and mind-clearing experience that needlepointing gives her, Pauley also uses the craft to impact her community. When Pauley wants to gift someone something, she often turns to needlepoint to make a handmade present.
“It makes you feel so much more like you have a purpose,” Pauley said. “You’re not just spending that useless time on your phone, and you’re actually doing something for someone else.”
Similarly, Department Chair of Mathematics Caroline Robb also uses needlepointing to make personalized gifts for her family. She has made two pillows and a door hanger for her daughter’s nursery as well as a belt for her husband, and she is currently working on ornaments for all her family members.
“I love the fact that I can make things for people: that it’s something that I feel like is creative but not taxing,” Robb said.
Robb’s journey with needlepoint began when she was pregnant since being on screens made her feel sick.
“I found that needlepoint kept me off my screen,” Robb said. “At night I had something to do; I wasn’t watching tv, I wasn’t doom scrolling and I fell in love with it.”
As someone who has picked up many temporary hobbies throughout her life, Robb can see herself needlepointing long-term.
“I had a hiatus [from needlepointing] when the baby was just born and it was too stressful to do anything else,” Robb said. “I realized I was doom scrolling, I was too deep in my phone, I was getting headaches and it wasn’t good. My sleep was all thrown off, so I thought, ‘You know what? Let’s change this up. Let’s go back and try needlepoint point and see how it goes.’ There was a huge difference.”
Robb said that needlepointing gives her a creative outlet that doesn’t require strenuous mental activity and allows her to disconnect from screens. For these reasons, Robb consistently needlepoints every night before she goes to bed.
“It’s one of the best things I’ve done for my mental health in a long time,” Robb said. “Having a young child is really stressful, and when she goes to bed, I spend an hour after she goes to sleep decompressing and needlepointing just to calm down about eight notches. Putting the baby to bed is not an easy task, so [needlepointing] just takes all the pressure off for the day.”
Robb has also used needlepoint to build connections with others.
“If I’m around my husband, I’ll have a conversation because [needlepointing] doesn’t take so much focus that I can’t talk to someone,” Robb said. “I really don’t love watching TV with people because I feel like it’s not social enough, and you’re not investing time with that person, but [needlepoint] lets me focus better on a conversation than other activities.”
Robb has even made new connections with people from the greater needlepointing community in Dallas at coffee shop meetups.
“Reddit has a huge needle point community as does Facebook,” Robb said. “You can get really, really deep and ask people what they’re doing and how they would approach something.”
Junior Emily Blumenthal also connects with others over needlepoint. Blumenthal recently took one of her friends to a needlepoint store and plans to give her lessons because it can be frustrating to learn at first.
“When I first started, I did get really frustrated with myself because I was teaching myself, and I would just mess up sometimes,” Blumenthal said. “But then I learned that mistakes happen and it’s okay, and I learned how to fix them a little bit more because practice makes perfect.”
Blumenthal values the perseverance that needlepointing has taught her and the mindful time she gets to spend needlepointing. The craft has become one of her favorite offline and stress-relieving activities. She needlepoints for one to two hours on the weekends, and if she has a slower week, she does it for 30 minutes every night.
“I definitely think it’s important to have other hobbies and creative outlets because it’s just a really nice break at the end of my day to do something that’s not on my screen and is relaxing,” Blumenthal said.
Blumenthal has noticed a significant decrease in the amount of time she spends on her phone since beginning needlepoint.
“Especially over winter break, those couple days when I was home, it really took down my screen time substantially,” Blumenthal said. “I noticed it [went] down a couple of hours, so it was a crazy change.”
Using technology for the majority of her school day along with her frequent temptation to pass time on social media motivated Blumenthal to disconnect and take some time to explore her creative side.
Junior Tari Agbeyangi also said that making needlepoint part of her daily routine has kept her disconnected from her phone and in touch with her creativity.
“It’s something that’s really mindless, so you don’t need as much attention for it,” Agbeyangi said. “It’s something I do every day for about 40 minutes before I go to bed, so it’s just to wind myself down and really get me off my phone.”
Blumenthal and Agbeyangi plan to start a needlepoint club next year to spread their passion for the craft. Agbeyangi said that along with decreasing screen time, needlepointing significantly helped with her stress levels.
“I remember before I started needlepoint, I would always be really stressed out which was not good,” Agbeyangi said. “Since I’ve started needlepoint, I’ve been much calmer lately.”
