My name is Erich Campbell, and you’re probably here because I write profusely for industry magazines and blogs, because I’ve won some awards for my work, or because you’ve seen me carrying on about embroidery on a live stream. I’ve digitized and designed machine embroidery full-time since just before 2000, doing so from 2004 to early 2017 doing so for Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Black Duck Embroidery and Screen Printing as well as creating and managing their e-commerce solutions and handling myriad IT challenges. Now, I help create software products for every embroiderer at Embrilliance and educate those products’ users, while remaining empowered to educate the industry, no matter what tools they use, making it easier for every embroiderer and digitizer to do better work and express themselves through our medium.
Aside from my weekly live stream, The Takeup, I educate as a monthly columnist for the UK’s Images Magazine, and contribute to both GraphicsPro and Impressions Magazines on occasion. I’ve been a monthly columnist in Printwear Magazine, but I’ve been writing about the industry for a very long time before the magazines. I started with the On Links and Needles blog for Stitches Magazine, writing for many years before they became Wearables Magazine. I covered everything from the obvious digitizing and embroidery techniques to e-commerce practices, to integrating technology into your day, and veered off into the quantified life, motivation, marketing, and self-help when the mood strikes me. I was also a frequent contributor to Stitches Magazine, including my role as one of the authors of their award-winning Ask an Expert column.
I also wrote a feature column for MrXStitch.com, the art and craft-focused site from the immensely talented Jamie ‘Mr X Stitch’ Chalmers. It is entitled ‘Ghost in the (Embroidery) Machine‘ wherein I exposed a more varied readership of artists, crafters, craftivists, and fiber-workers and stitch-lovers of all stripes to the inner workings of machine embroidery and digitizing.
As of 2017, I began teaching live at trade shows; you may have seen me at the Midwest’s own fantastic Decorated Apparel Expo (lovingly known as DAX) shows as well as at multiple industry-leading ISS Shows (now Impressions Expo) yearly, giving my own take on digitizing for embroidery, how to edit designs, and much more. I continue to submit topics as requested with the full intention to keep teaching embroidery, apparel decoration, and the business that surrounds the craft.
If you’ve made it this far, you are probably wondering if I do or have done anything that’s not embroidery-adjacent. Here’s the quick facts- Even while I was first learning my craft, I was busy securing a degree from the University of New Mexico in English, however, my primary focus was in Medieval Studies. Imagine me translating bits of Beowulf from a regularized Old English edition, and you are close to the mark. My primary interest, however, was always early Medieval Scandinavia. My love for Icelandic Sagas and Mythological poetry translated to a summer in Iceland that still informs my artistic sensibilities to this day.
I have variously been a writer of poetry (still am on occasion), a player of folk music (Appalachian or Mountain Dulcimer, though I’m rusty of late), and I am an avid reader of nearly all genres, with a daily habit that ranges from all manner of fiction and poetry to non-fiction and scientific studies. I am a lover of technology, and as the ad-hoc IT staff at every company at which I’ve been employed until this one, I’m equally comfortable building a network as threading up a multi-head machine.
If I had to boil it all down to one ideal, it’s that whether we choose ink , words, or thread, I feel that we all have the need to express ourselves, to see the world through others’ expressions of themselves, and to attempt mutual understanding through the conversations that drive creates. I love what I do, for I get to be a vehicle of a very personal form expression through decorating apparel- and in writing about that, I am able to start conversations that further this all-important need for myself and my readers.
