Lesley Arfin Talks Needlepoint

By Sophie Coleman / November 17th, 2011 in Culture / New York / 206 views

Lesley Arfin—writer, poet, Chloe Sevigny‘s BFF and all round wordsmith extraordinaire—adds another string (or should that be thread) to her bow, discussing her passion for needlepoint in Hobbyist, a seven part video series by Twin Bike for Opening Ceremony that explores the favored hobbies of OC’s high-profile pals.

A self-taught needlepointer, Lesley explains her early inspiration for the craft stemmed from her grandmother’s pillow creations, in particular one that paid tribute to 70s fashion icons, with Halston, Dior and Chanel all “splashed” across the cover in stitching. In a similar vein, her initial idea was to pay tribute to her beloved rock and roll music icons using the craft to produce record covers. As she hilariously explains, her mark on the craft is to work at it til it’s nearly finished then leave it—like her Rolling Stone cover pictured below, which is a “pube away from being finished”.

So what are Lesley’s needlepoint essentials? Get yourself a needlepoint kit, cute Cathy bag (Ack!) and seam ripper—”the most amazing tool of all time”. And in her typical anti-establishment and entertaining fashion that we adore, she basically encourages you to just to get into it and have a go—as Lesley says “I’m probably doing it wrong…but what is wrong?”

Check out Lesley Arfin’s website for more details of her upcoming projects, including the highly-anticipated Lena Dunham x Judd Apatow series, Girls.