When I’m embroidering, I forget about everything else. Time flies and I stop thinking about my worries or my problems. I sit down wanting to just embroider one flower, and then I end up finishing three flowers without even noticing the time.
I really like that I can balance my work and my household chores. I wake up at seven in the morning, make breakfast, do some work around the house. At ten, my students come and we sit and do our embroidery. I teach them things, we chat, and the girls also say that you don’t notice the time pass when you’re doing embroidery. Then it’s lunchtime, I take a break and then go back to embroidering. Later my husband comes home, we have dinner, and I embroider some more. At home, I’ve made a little corner where no one will bother me.
Before, it was sometimes hard when I didn’t have enough time to do something or I couldn’t do everything myself, and I had to ask others for help. Now I’m able to do everything myself, and if I don’t have time for something I can ask one of my students.
The most valuable thing about our craft is that everything is made by hand - centuries may pass, but the work doesn’t lose its luster. I meet tourists from all over the world, and a lot of people don't believe that my work is handmade. I even had a disagreement with this foreigner, a woman, and I asked her to come back the next day so that I had my tools with me and I could show her my work. The woman came back, and I explained all the elements to her and sewed a couple of them with my crochet. I remember that then she praised my work and said that you couldn’t distinguish it from something made by a machine. That made me very happy. In fact, people who are unfamiliar with the craft are often suspicious, so now, when I go to exhibitions, I always take a tool with me so that people can make sure that everything is handmade.
I took part in exhibitions and festivals in countries around the world - America, Turkey, Oman, Azerbaijan, India and Kazakhstan. And my products have always won prizes, usually first place.
If I embroider every day, it takes me a month and a half to make one suzani. But still, I’ve gotten faster over the years - when I embroidered my first pillowcase, for example, it took me five days, and now I can do that kind of work in three.
My best sales are made at exhibitions and festivals. I also have my own art shop at the Broadway Center. I tried to offer a wide variety of products, because large suzani are quite expensive, and not everyone can afford one, so for the store I embroider small suzani, tapestries, bags and headbands. For smaller items I sometimes use cotton threads instead of silk, to keep the cost down. It’s important to me that people never leave my store empty-handed.
