BENDY STITCHY: STITCH WITH ME

Bendy Stitchy:

written by Dana Costa photos courtesy of Michelle Garrette

Stitch with Me

f you think that the name of the genius of Bendy I

Stitchy is Michelle Bendy, you are in good company. You’re also wrong. Bendy Stitchy’s founder, Michelle Garrette, named her Flosstube channel Bendy Stitchy because she used to be super into yoga. By the time she decided to start her design business, the name had stuck and Bendy Stitchy became her thing. And is true with Michelle’s approach to her stitching business what was the worst that could happen by keeping Bendy Stitchy as her name? With Michelle, it seems like there has been no downside to her leaps of faith. Take her super-popular Flosstube channel that generates thousands of views per episode. After being introduced to Flosstube in late 2016, Michelle watched her friend’s Flosstube for about six months before trying it for herself. “Being me,” Michelle says, “I just jumped in with an episode every week and never looked back.” Michelle’s Flosstube videos make you feel like you are talking to that smart, savvy, well-read friend you love to sit and have coffee with for hours on end. On any given weekly episode, you can catch Michelle sharing her best new thing, finishes, WIPs, and featuring fave creators. “If a person or a product or a project brings me joy, my subscribers can expect to hear about it,” Michelle says. In addition to her successful Flosstube channel, she sells on Etsy and on her own website, writes a chatty and fun blog, has a great Facebook page, a cool Patreon following, interacts on Discord, stays active on multiple Instagram accounts. And that’s

just the business side of the house. On the personal side, you can find Michelle on social media, sure, but she and her family list more low-tech hobbies as favorites: walks, board games, and bowling.

Based in Eugene, Oregon (USA), Michelle started stitching as a youngster of just 6-years-old.

“My Gram gave me a pretty sharp needle, a stamped pillowcase, and some Cosmo floss. I wish I still had those pillowcases. They were so wabi sabi and so wonderful,” she recalls.

Even though you can often see Michelle’s knitting creations on her socials and she’s dabbled in embroidery, she admits that it’s pretty much always been about cross stitching for her.

“I call myself an equal opportunity stitcher,” she admits, before rattling off designers across every genre you can imagine. Hands Across the Sea samplers. Heaven and Earth Designs full coverage. Tiny Modernist cute. Stone Street Stitchworks modern Quaker. Ink Circles mandalas. And, she adds, “Shakespeare’s Peddler and Barbara Ana Designs. I will basically stitch anything either of them put out.”

After showcasing other creators through Flosstube, she was ready to take another leap of faith. “I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to see realized,” she says, “but I thought, ‘there are so many great patterns out there already, does anyone really want to hear what I have to say? And then I

thought, ‘well, I want to hear what I have to say.’ What’s the worst thing that can happen? Nobody stitches my designs and my new business flops? Worse things have happened.”

Michelle released her first pattern in March 2019 in XStitch Magazine and she knows of only one person who stitched that first pattern because she saw it on Instagram. Michelle remembers: “That was enough for me to say, ‘yep, I’m going to keep doing this.’”

She officially registered her business, Bendy Stitchy, soon after.

She calls her own esthetic primsical — a mix of primitive and whimsical —and it is the hallmark of her business. “One of my favorite designs is my Personal is Political. It’s a super sweet spot sampler with a very modern statement,” she says.

The mix of contemporary and historic speaks to the resurgence of interest in the needle arts but Michelle also believes there’s another reason. “Social media!”

“I think the vast majority of stitchers thought they were the only ones out there;” she says. “Or at least that it was pretty uncommon to stitch. But with Instagram and Facebook and Flosstube, we all realized that there were a lot of us out there and we’re all over. It feels good to find a community.”