A Stitch a Day with Bente Kooreman

In running the Embroidery Journaling Facebook Group, I’ve come across quite a few unique and intriguing embroidery journals. Bente Kooreman’s embroidery journal is certainly one of the more different journals that I’ve seen in my tenure of running the group. Bente’s embroidery journal instead of focusing on individual icons that represent her day focuses on entire segments that focus in on her entire monthly theme. Whether that be sea creatures or her dog, each month has its own individual theme.

I was thrilled when she agreed to be interviewed for my A Stitch a Day series. Read along to learn all about her embroidery journal.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My name is Bente Kooreman. I’m 59 years old.  I am originally from The Netherlands and living for 25 years on Curaçao, a small island in the Caribbean.

I’m married, we have three dogs, four cats and an old tortoise called Mango.

I attended art school in Utrecht (The Netherlands) a long time ago. Afterwards, I held various jobs such as designer for kids clothes, vet tech at a veterinary service, telephone operator and volunteering in an animal shelter.

My other passions are crochet and watercolor. I crochet cute animal amigurumi. A couple of years ago,I crocheted a little lizard named Benni. He has a lot of adventures that I post on Facebook and Instagram.

I really like to paint animal portraits. For three years I gave watercolor lessons. It was quite fun to do. 

How did you learn to embroider?

My mom taught me cross-stitching when I was six or seven years old. I started on an old fashioned cross-stitch sampler. But I didn’t finish it, I think.

My parents are really talented. My dad is an illustrator. My mom used to paint and sewed almost all of my clothes when I was young. She still sews my father’s clothes.

She taught me how to sew, knit and crochet.

She did a lot of embroidering in the seventies when I was young. I wore a lot of dresses and pants that were embroidered by my mom. She embroidered lots of art nouveau flowers. 

 For years I did nothing with embroidery. I started embroidery again in the COVID period, when we were all in lockdown.

I first started pimping-up some of my old jeans with embroidery. I’m still wearing them.

After that, I used cuffs from my husband’s old shirts to make colorful bracelets. That was also a good practice to experiment and learn about all the different stitches.

I searched for them on Pinterest, YouTube, Google and in an old embroidery book that I had still lying around.

One day last year I came across an embroidery journal when I was scrolling on Pinterest.

So I searched on Facebook, and I was hooked. I wanted to do that in 2024.

This is my first embroidery journal and I’m planning to make more in the years to come.

How do you decide on the unique monthly themes of your embroidery journal?

My life is a little bit boring to fill up a whole month, so I decided to do a monthly theme.

I started thinking about what is around me. We are surrounded by water and I used to dive, so one theme had to be “under water”. 

Also, nasty creepy crawlers that live in the garden and visit us sometimes in the house.

But I’m free to change themes and icons at the last moment. I did just that with the month of June. We had a little scare with our little pug, Buddha, so I decided to honor her in June. It was also her birthday.

Creating the journal is also a very good practice, especially for 3D icons

What have been some of your favorite icons that you have embroidered this year?

It’s difficult to choose a favorite. The month that I’m working on is always my favorite. The solar eclipse is, I have to say, a favorite. We were in Texas when we saw the whole thing happen.

My underwater theme is another favorite, with all the fishes and coral.

I’m proud of my old coffee maker in the coffee and tea month, especially how I got it so shiny.

I’m only halfway through, so lots of favorites to come. 

How do you go about spacing out your icons?

Because it is my first journal, it is the classic pie or pizza model. 

In January I started in the middle in the smaller space of the pie and worked my way up to the edge of the hoop. At the moment I start where it is fun to start. In the beginning my Icons were small and I tried to do one every day. However, my piece of the pie started to fill up too soon. 

In later months, some of my icons became bigger. When I think I’m almost finished I start to fill up spaces, like in the months February, March and May.

I go with the flow now.

What supplies do you use to create your embroidery journal?

I use a lot of DMC floss, that is my favorite. I also use unknown floss that I find on the Island, and little beads and upholstery thread.

I’m also trying out metallic floss, but that’s still complicated.

My mom sent over a bunch of her old embroidery floss, a brand called Schurer, but I think it doesn’t exist anymore. 

When we were on holiday I bought a lot of DMC embroidery floss and new needles. On the island we have a tiny little shop that sells DMC floss as long supplies last.

I use a 12 inch hoop. My first idea was to go big, but I could not find a bigger hoop, maybe next year!

I draw my icons first on a piece of paper. I have a little note pad that I use to practice my little drawings and design how and where I put them on the fabric.

For drawing my icons on the fabric I use a pencil or a ballpoint pen.

The fabric I use is plain unbleached cotton, but I have to say it stretches a little bit. Something to remember for next year!

Sometimes I’m a little behind with the icons, but that’s okay for me. It has to be fun and relaxing to make my journal. 

What advice do you have for someone wanting to create an embroidery journal?

For everyone who thinks about starting a journal, just do it, don’t panic and don’t stress!

Look around you, what is in your garden, your cats, dogs, food you like etc…

Search on Pinterest, look in books, see what other people did and learn from that, get inspired! 

It doesn’t have to be fancy, it is a good practice project.

Where can we find you online?

You can find me on Facebook: Bente Kooreman, Art”It’s Something Different Curaçao” and Benni the Lizard.  On Instagram @Benni the Lizard. 

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