Sarah Cline on Creating the Cover for ‘The Joys of Christmas’

Hi Guideposts; I’m Sarah Cline. I embroidered the illustration for the cover of The Joys of Christmas. I never had any formal training in embroidery; I sort of stumbled upon it by accident. I made a portrait for an employee art show when I was a barista, and then someone saw it who was an illustration rep and she asked if I wanted representation, so yeah, I decided to become an illustrator using embroidery. I try to mostly make colorful, happy, warm type of images. Every time somebody sees this—even in print, but when they see it in person, they, like, can’t resist touching it. And I get it, too; it’s just so smooth and all the different directions of the fabric, and I love her hair so much. This took so long. Each one of these little curls is a little French knot, which was time-consuming, but worth it, right? I think it was so worth it. [laughs] It has a wholesome quality, I suppose, which I like, because it’s old-fashioned. But I also lke that I try to put in photo-realistic elements, like, you know, glares and light shines and shadows, things like that. I also did each of the section openers [for The Joys of Christmas], which was so much fun to do because each one portrayed a different aspect of Christmas. After doing the Joys of Christmas cover—and I think the angel turned out so beautifully and I had so much fun doing the golden feathers on the wings—it’s inspired me to make more dolls that are angels, and I now plan on doing perhaps a while series of celebrities I admire or respect that have passed on, in the form of angels—like this, with big beautiful wings. I’m so happy with the way the cover turned out. I think it looks beautiful, and I’m really honored to be the first illustrator to do something so different for the cover.