You meet an artist who paints without paint. You see portraits built with thread, not pigment. This is the world of Sila Gur, the Turkish artist known as Jolly Hoops. She lives in Scotland and builds detailed portraits with nothing more than needles, fabric, and patience. Her story shows you how creativity helps you rebuild your sense of self when life takes you somewhere new.
Sila moved from Turkey to Scotland in 2018 with her husband and their one-year-old daughter. The move pulled her away from her work in Fine Arts, Fashion Design, and Styling. She became a full-time mother and felt the loss of routine and personal space. You understand this feeling if you’ve ever stepped away from your work and missed the rhythm it gave you. Sila wanted to feel productive again. She wanted a small part of each day to belong to her.
She looked for ideas online and found modern embroidery artists on Pinterest. She ordered her first supplies on Amazon and discovered that embroidery gave her a new way to use every skill she already had. She didn’t follow patterns. She experimented. She stitched the way a painter moves a brush. She built scenes with thread the same way someone else builds light and shadow with paint.
She calls what she does thread painting. You can see why when you watch her process. She sketches first. She draws on A4 paper. She brings that sketch into ProCreate on her iPad and plays with colour and detail. She redraws the final version onto fabric with a heat-erasable pen. This step slows her down and gives her time to understand the shapes she will stitch. After that, she begins the long process of layering thread. Long stitches. Short stitches. Slow progress.
Jolly Hoops chooses her tools with care. She uses DMC thread because it gives her rich colours and smooth texture. She works on thick cotton or linen so the fabric can hold her dense stitching. She uses a Nurge hoop and stand because it frees her hands and lets her work comfortably for hours.
Two features make her style easy for you to recognise. She hides the faces. She turns her figures away from you or blocks their features. She does this on purpose. She wants you to see someone from your own life in each piece. You fill in the missing face with someone you know, and the work becomes personal. She also stitches hair with extreme detail. She blends more than twenty colours to show depth and movement. She builds highlights strand by strand. A single hairstyle can take eighty hours.
You can feel the time in Jolly Hoops work. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is guessed. She builds each image slowly, and the result looks alive.
She began sharing her work on Instagram, but nothing changed at first. She kept going. She refined her technique. The shift came when DMC, the global thread company, shared one of her pieces. Her audience found her. People from around the world started following her progress. She didn’t use ads. She didn’t push her work. Her craft carried her forward.
Her original pieces now sell out quickly on her website. She teaches her techniques through online courses, where she shows people how to stitch realistic hair. She finds joy in the fact that people feel connected to her work and want to learn from her.
You see a clear pattern in her story. She moved to a new country. She lost her creative space. She built a new one with thread. She rebuilt her sense of identity one stitch at a time. Her story shows you that simple tools can give you a voice when you need one.
If you want to follow her journey or explore her thread paintings, you can find her at @jolly_hoops.
Jolly Hoops
Website | Instagram | Facebook
- Hand Embroidery Stitches At-A-Glance: Carry-Along Reference Guide
- The Royal School of Needlework Book of Embroidery: A Guide To Essential Stitches, Techniques And Projects
- “Is This AI?”: Viewers Can’t Believe This Mind-Bending Embroidery Is Real
Hello art lovers. My name is Deepak Mehla, and I’m from Karnal, India. I enjoy reading stories about people’s struggles and how they overcome them. These motivational stories work like a source of energy for me.
Although Arttellers is completely different from my original vision, I, too, am going through a challenging phase in life. To keep myself busy and to hold on to hope, I share stories of artists with all of you. I believe these stories will give you a new direction, just as they inspire me.
Arttellers exists because I want to share how some people turn the work they love into their livelihood, and how choosing their passion leads them to success. I started Arttellers to keep my own hope alive and to help you discover people whose journeys might inspire you too.
