'I find a lot of joy in creating': This Amelia artist is viral for creating realistic embroidered pet portraits

It all started with Pearl.

In Michelle Staub's home studio, a wall showcases three portraits, all of the 9-year-old cat, but each is more complex and realistic than the last.

They aren't photos or drawings. Instead, these portraits of the Pearl are made thread by thread, with hours of work put in by Staub. One even has a whisker thread through the canvas.

“She’s my soul," Staub said. "I made artwork of her in different mediums: I tried digital drawings, painting her, all of that."

But with the help of Pearl, "it was a natural transition to embroidery.”

The portraits show a progression in Staub's craft that she can reference as she has taken her hobby and made it her full-time job.

For 40 to 60 hours a week, Staub sits at her desk in her studio at her home in Amelia, pushing and pulling her needle and embroidery thread in and out of a canvas.

She’s an artist, creating these realistic pet portraits.

Her studio is small, but a space that's fully her own, save the litter box for the cats in the closet. Adjacent to the desk, there's also a dedicated spot with lights and a camera for taking pictures of her work or other things she needs to run her business – also key components for her business as she's gained a following on Instagram and TikTok.

"I have a thing for green," she said of the room, where plants are scattered among a small couch with a green cover.

Above her desk neatly arranged are the various tools she uses while embroidering: hoops, scissors and most importantly, at least a hundred different shades of thread, the culmination of years of collecting.

When working on a pet portrait, Staub said she often finds noses and the fur surrounding them to be the most difficult part of the project to complete.

“I really love embroidery, and I love repetitive tasks,” Staub said. “I find a lot of joy in creating. And it’s always interesting, the different things I work at.”

Why pet portraits?

Through her social media accounts, @StitchingSabbatical, 29-year-old Staub has built an impressive following over the seven years she’s been creating – 184,000 followers on Instagram and 163,000 on TikTok – showcasing her commissions, creative process and most recently, a new book to be released.

Staub moved to the Cincinnati area in 2015 with her husband and sister after going to school at Ohio University.

An art major in college, she had been thinking of things to sell online, cycling through ideas before landing on cross-stitching. To start, she tried stitching characters from Animal Crossing and other Nintendo video games.

But eventually, Staub became bored with cross-stitching and moved to embroidery, which allowed her more creativity and freedom, she said.

Staub brought methods she learned from oil painting classes in college into her embroidery, a technique she later learned was called thread painting.

By the end of 2014, she was focusing solely on pet portraits and working full-time by winter 2015.

"I'm still amazed by her work," said Staub's husband, John Lortie. "The photorealism she's able to achieve with thread, fabric and a needle is mind-blowing. It's so cool, because I'm able to peek over her shoulder as she does it, and it's an awesome tactile thing to actually feel a portrait—it's a sensation you don't ever get to experience in other forms of art."

She stitches both outlines of pets and more detailed portraits, which she described as a "paint by number" process for working, first by drawing the pattern using the graphics app ProCreate.

Now, she works on commission only and is currently completing five pet portraits, four for commission and one for an online class.

As part of her process, Staub asks for two to three photos of the pet in good lighting and works with the client to plan the project. She sends a mockup of the embroidery based on the reference photo, and then makes any subsequent edits before she begins embroidering.

Staub shares her progress on social media (unless it's a gift). A portrait can take a minimum of eight weeks to complete, and once finished, she sends a photo to the client, where small edits can be made at the end before it's mailed out.

According to the Stitching Sabbatical website, the price for detailed pet portraits range from $950 up to $1,350.

She mainly stitches dogs and cats but has done others including a Jersey cow and her current project, an orchid mantis.

But if you want her to do a portrait of your pet, you'll have to get in line. The current waitlist is at around 1,200.

"(Michelle) is aware that these pieces mean a lot to the people that buy them, and many use them as memorial pieces to pets they've loved," Lortie said. "She's an amazing person beyond being an artist: she's really good at what she does, she's caring, and takes to heart everything her customers request of her regarding portraits."

Making social media an integral part of the business

Staub launched her Instagram in 2014, but had been posting and building a small following before on the microblogging website Tumblr. Over the last seven years, the Stitching Sabbatical Instagram page has bloomed as she’s built her audience and business, even going viral a time or two.

The idea for the Stitching Sabbatical name came about partly due to procrastination on focusing on “real world stuff,” as she called it, and simply because she thought the word sabbatical “sounded cool.”

Like seemingly everyone else now, Stitching Sabbatical is also on TikTok, though she joined before the COVID-19 pandemic brought an influx of users to the app in 2020. Her first public video was posted in November 2019. She now gatherers around a few thousand views per video, and her most viewed was in June 2020 at 3.3 million views and over 819,000 likes.

An Instagram video she made embordering a tabby cat also went viral on multiple platforms, an experience Staub described as “overwhelming.”

Her website crashed, she gained thousands of followers, and her waitlist grew.

“It’s kind of scary, going viral, because your content goes outside your community,” Staub said. “People watching don’t know you and they don’t always understand what’s happening.”

She stays in touch with her audience, posting Instagram stories almost daily and going live on the platform every Tuesday.

The COVID-19 pandemic also had an effect on hobby and craft communities in a "positive way," she said as many people took up new hobbies while they were stuck inside.

"The embroidery community grew so much."

From portraits to the printed page

Staub first had the idea for “Pet Portrait Embroidery: Lovingly Stitch Your Dog or Cat.” in 2018 and began contacting publishers the following year.

She spent the majority of 2020 working on the book, which contains 12 patterns of cats and dogs with different types of fur and colors as well as outlines for people who are just getting started in the world of pet portrait embroidery.

There are also chapters on reference photos and advice on how to choose the right thread colors.

The book was officially released Nov. 15 and is available to buy either print or e-editions through major retailers, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Target.

Staub, with the help of her parents and family, put together 60 embroidery kits for the book launch, which contained pre-printed fabric, the corresponding thread, needles and an embroidery hoop for people to easily create their own portraits. They sold out, and Staub said she plans to make more.

"It's really cool to finally have this out because there’s not a book out there like this," Staub said. "I really wanted to make one for pets."

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Stitching Sabbatical artist embroiders viral, realistic pet portraits