I can't remember now, who taught me to embroider, but I'm sure it was either my Mom or my Grandma (Mom's Mother). I have done quite a bit of embroidery work for myself, and a whole-cloth embroidered quilt (my avatar is a picture of this quilt). My judgment is that I should have had more variations in the embroidery floss I used in order to better manifest what I was embroidering. This embroidery object began as a 3" X 4" image on the University of Arkansas website. I drew, enlarged, re-drew, re-enlarged and kept enlarging and redrawing until I had it the size I ended up with. It took me 5 months to do the satin-stitch embroidery for that Arkansas Razorback. I've done some other things -- my cousin had a wish for an embroidered "Sooner Schooner" covered wagon (she's from Oklahoma), and I'm currently have some projects underway, but not finished. I then got involved in making a quilt for the son of a very good friend of mine, who served in the U.S. Army, in Afghanistan and was seriously injured there. That quilt is almost completed. Hand embroidery is much like painting with thread. There's no end to what you can make with embroidery. Hand embroidery is NOT that difficult. I will say this -- I tried counted cross-stitch -- somehow it just didn't work for me. I do enjoy creating an image from embroidery. I frequently draw or trace my embroidery patterns from an image I see -- an image which is not a part of any commercial embroidery pattern.
Jeanette