Data Analytics

09 June 2026

For today’s blog post: Some light data analysis on the active members of the Athena’s Thimble Guild that absolutely no one asked for!

First, we need to cover how the guild is structured. There are 4 categories of competencies that a person can achieve, working knowledge, competency, period competency, and expert. You can rank in 12 different categories of embroidery: applique, blackwork, canvaswork, laidwork, counted thread, lacis, metallic thread, needlelace, openwork, stumpwork, pleated embroidery, and free embroidery. (The website has extended explanations for all 12 categories, I highly recommend checking it out!) As of today, there are 586 active members of the guild. I am not usually a data person, but I got curious and slipped headfirst down a data analytics rabbit hole. Don’t expect this of me regularly! With that being said, let’s dive into the data.

The thing that kicked off this accidental dive into data analytics was that I went looking for the people who achieved expert rank in any of the categories. Expert is, somewhat obviously, a really difficult thing to achieve. I wanted to see who had reached this level of embroidery, and how they had gotten there. I was shocked to discover that there are only 4 individuals who have achieved expert level in any of the 12 categories, and only one individual who has achieved expert level in more than one category! This means that expert level ranges from 0% to a high of just 0.9% per category. Only one category has two experts, laidwork. The other categories that have an expert are applique, blackwork, metallic thread, pleated embroidery, and free embroidery. For those paying attention, that means half the categories do not have anyone who is an expert in them at all!

As an aside, I looked up the 4 people who have expert levels. All 4 of them are Laurels, (which is the highest level award within the SCA for Arts and Sciences), and are senior members of the guild. At least 3 of them have been or currently hold officer positions within the guild, and 2 of them have east kingdom wiki pages. Amusingly, 2 of them became laurels at the same event in different years. (Mudthaw is a good event for embroiderers I guess!) I’ve found blogs for 2 of them, and one broken link to a paper written for the expert level panel. I’ll probably reach out to these individuals to see if they have any active links or photos from their expert level portfolios, because I am dying to see that level of work!

Editing note: in the DAY it took me to edit and post this, I did reach out to Mistress Amy Webbe, who achieved an expert rank in blackwork. She was kind enough to send me her 10 page paper on blackwork, as well as a powerpoint filled with stunning high resolution photos of extant examples of blackwork. I learned so much from reading her paper, not only about blackwork, but also about what goes into an embroidery A&S essay for the SCA. Thank you Mistress Amy!

Ok, back to data analysis. The category with the highest level of participation is free embroidery, with 58.4% of the active guild members ranking in it. That’s 342 people, with 94.7% of them achieving competency. (And yours truly is part of that statistic!) The category with the lowest level of participation is openwork, with only 10.4% of the active guild members achieving any rank. However, of those 150 people, an impressive 71.3% achieved competency. From highest participation to lowest participation numbers, the categories rank as follows: free embroidery, counted thread, blackwork, applique, laidwork, metallic thread, canvaswork, pleated embroidery, stumpwork, needlelace, lacis, and openwork.

In my opinion, I think participation in the categories roughly translates to difficulty of the category, though accessibility to the artform also plays a role. Free embroidery is where most people start their embroidery journeys, it’s what you see around you most frequently. Counted thread includes cross stitch, which is wildly popular as well. When you get to things like needlework, lacis and openwork, you’re essentially creating lace with a needle and thread, something that is incredibly difficult and time consuming. However, it’s also decently difficult to get the specialized things you need to do the artform. All three categories are best done on specific fabrics/nets, and the instruction books cost more and are rarer to find. For example on the books specifically, I can find a beginner embroidery book on amazon for less than $9, but a book on stumpwork will run you nearly $50!

What I found fascinating (and kind of amusing), was that I expected working knowledge to be the rank with the highest number of people, and that it would narrow as the ranking categories got harder. In practice though, most people are in the competent rank, ranging from 94.7% to 71.3% of participants in each category. Working knowledge ranges from 1.8% to 26% of participants, period competency ranges from 1.4% to 7% of participants, and expert doesn’t even hit 1%. I find that a lot of artisans are also perfectionists, myself included. I’m willing to bet that a lot more people would fall into the working knowledge rank, but they probably don’t think their work counts as “good enough” or they’re unwilling to share their work while it’s in progress. It’s a good reminder that everyone starts somewhere, and to share your art sooner and more frequently.