Historically, cross-stitch was largely relational. The feminine virtues that it described (piety, gentility, domestic responsibility, and spousal devotion) attracted potential suitors, ensuring successful ‘love’ matches.  

Subtracting text from pre-existing cross-stitch, a process that’s similar to erasure poetry, transforms lengthy, pre-determined verse into short instances of speech. The remaining text — sweet nothings, passionate ramblings, and lovelorn pleas — assert a contemporary love affair upon the marital practices cross-stitch upheld, recontextualizing a dismissed form of feminine expression. 

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Writing about you told me once but i forgot:

“The resulting work is not only an elevation of an artform that isn’t often given its due; it’s the reclamation and liberation of a traditional, restrictive expressive mode. The bursts of language Eckert embroiders brim with tender feeling and innuendo, gently asserting their agency.” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7)

”Grey Eckert utilizes the historically feminine — and overlooked — art of embroidery to conjure up and recast the past.” (New Visionary Magazine, Issue 7)