Bayou Artist | TRACY SMITH

ARTICLE BY APRIL C DOUGHTY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MOORE CLARK

Every portrait Tracy Smith embroiders comes to life one stitch at a time. The process is time consuming but full of heart, which is fitting for an artist whose own life has been shaped by patience, perseverance, and faith. Known primarily for her intricately embroidered portraits on everything from jackets and bags to quilts and keepsakes, Smith transforms fabric and thread into deeply personal works of art. While she also creates images of cartoon characters, classic cars, animals, and other subjects, much of her work comes through commissioned portraits, each piece preserving a memory that matters to someone else.

Long before Smith’s embroidery became a business, fabric and thread were lifelines to her. After losing her dad at a young age, Smith watched her mom work tirelessly to provide for the family, stretching every dollar she could. Money was scarce, and luxuries were few. When Barbie doll clothes were out of reach, Smith, who had watched her mom sew clothes for the family, decided she would learn to sew her own doll clothes. With her mom’s guidance, she drew her own patterns and stitched her first tiny garments, unknowingly beginning a lifelong relationship with textiles. 

She learned early on that beautiful things can be created from humble circumstances, and she’s carried that lesson with her through devastating setbacks, including a near-fatal car accident, difficult seasons of life, and years spent working toward the equipment and opportunities she needed to pursue her dreams. Today, Smith describes creating with fabric and thread as therapy, and says the greatest reward isn’t the finished piece itself, but the joy it brings to the people who receive it.

Smith first experienced that joy through her mom’s excitement in response to her budding skills when she was still a young seamstress. Smith’s mom was always her biggest fan. Seeing her mom light up every time she showed her a new creation was the motivation and encouragement she needed to keep growing her skills and creating new things. 

Although Smith never had any formal education in art, textiles, or design, she’s been infatuated with art, especially drawing, since sketching her first bug from simple shapes at age three. Throughout her life, drawing has been the foundational skill that’s kept her going. When something grabs her attention, she starts drawing. “Then my mind just goes to tweaking, and ideas just pop like something downloading into my brain,” she said. 

Today, her creativity and her love for art have expanded to include sewing, quilting, and embroidery. “I’m just so embedded in art and different textures and colors and just all different types of things mixed together,” Smith said, “and it comes out really creative.” At the same time, as a self- taught artist who’s come from meager beginnings, getting to where she is today has been both a challenge and a blessing. 

Nearly 40 years later, Smith still views one terrifying night in her early 20s as a defining reminder that God spared her life for a purpose. While trapped in a car during a couple’s violent domestic dispute, she realized the driver intended to crash the vehicle. She pleaded with him to let her out of the car, but he refused. As the car sped through multiple stop signs and into the path of an oncoming gas truck, she braced for what she believed would be her final moments. “All I remember was, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,’” she said. “I knew it was over with.”

Instead, Smith survived with only minor injuries, something she still attributes to God’s protection. Her body was thrown from the vehicle, and when she came to, she found herself on a church ground, cradled in a loose tire. “That was just the grace of God that saved me that day,” she said. The experience strengthened her conviction that her life has a purpose beyond herself. Today, she believes part of that purpose is sharing God’s love through her embroidery. Whether creating memorial portraits for grieving families or stitching pieces meant simply to encourage or bring joy, she pours herself into each work, hoping it brings comfort, hope, and a reminder that even in life’s darkest moments, people are not alone.

In 2012, when Smith first became interested in embroidery, she decided to purchase a computerized embroidery sewing machine, a Singer. It wasn’t cheap, and she paid for it in installments, but it allowed her to explore new avenues of creativity. While experimenting with her new machine, she was inspired to try embroidering a portrait of her daughter. “It was a mess,” she said, “but it was very artistic.” She admits this first attempt would pale in comparison to the work she’s creating now, but getting started is always the toughest part. 

Smith also faced setbacks with her equipment early in her embroidery journey. After learning that warranties don’t always provide the protection they appear to promise, she became discouraged enough to step away from embroidery for a time. “I kind of laid it down for a minute,” she said, “but something kept pulling me to do it.” When she returned, she decided to leave her Singer machine behind and began researching Brother machines instead. Even then, the path forward wasn’t easy. Her first financing application was denied, a disappointment that stirred memories of years spent confronting hardship and racism. Still, she had been working to change her outlook, so rather than accepting defeat, she resolved to keep trying. “Don’t worry about it,” she said to herself. “I’ll be back.” 

And she did go back. The day she got approved for the Brother Dream machine, she was so excited. Soon after, she was stitching out embroidered portraits of her children. To learn the machine and what it was capable of, she worked with it for two hours before and after her day job every day. “Trials and tribulations,” she said. “It was hard, but I love to grind.” Smith is no stranger to hard work and grew up with an excellent role model in her mom, but when you love what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work. 

In fact, over the years, she’s come to realize that creating with textiles has played a powerful role in her own wellbeing, especially through the more difficult seasons of life. At times, life has been so intense that it’s dragged her away from creating, but each time she found a reason to create again, she said, “It was a relief for me, and I put everything that I had into it. I had to get it out.” She didn’t realize it was like therapy for her until her husband questioned how much time she invested in it. At that point, she realized it’s easy to invest your time and your heart into something that makes you feel good in return. “It’s like it gave me life,” she said. “It gave me the will, and it made me so happy when I was so creative.”

Over time, Smith has put in countless hours of work and completed numerous projects, with most of her commissioned work coming to her through word of mouth and social media. She was excited to share that one of her TikTok videos on her account @blessedhandsdesigns2020 has over 357,000 views. She gets a lot of support from her followers and fans and loves seeing their reactions. “Every time I post things, they’re like, ‘Oh my God! It’s like you got another way of portrait. Forget a picture. Oh, yeah, you stitch it out.’”

Smith rarely creates for herself though. She said, “I do it because I feel like it helps people and because I like the emotions that people go through when I do something for them . . .  people really appreciate it, and . . . we love to be appreciated, to know that our work is appreciated because we put a lot of time in it.”

Smith shared numerous stories of people receiving her creations and being overwhelmed with emotion. She’s witnessed many tears and received many long hugs and words of appreciation in return for the sincere love and creativity that go into her work. Such responses are their own reward but also proof that her work is doing some good in the world. “In the scripture, it says, ‘Whatever you do to work with your hands, happy and well and blessed you will be,’” she said. 

Even when Smith has created the rare project for herself, it’s been with the goal of encouraging herself to be better and to rely on God for strength. During one particularly difficult period, she envisioned “a man … struggling, going through hard times. That was me.” She translated that image into an embroidered bag featuring a man praying with a cross and puzzle pieces separating. The broken puzzle represented the tendency to seek God when life begins to unravel. “As soon as those pieces start separating,” Smith said, “that’s when we run to God in prayer.” She completed the piece with symbolic colors, red for Christ’s blood, black for distractions, blue for mercy, and purple for God’s royalty and power.

Among Smith’s most meaningful projects was a custom bag she created for her mother before her death. Finding a suitable photograph proved unexpectedly difficult because her mother rarely allowed pictures of herself to be taken. After spending countless hours trying to recover and digitize a small image through outdated software, online tutorials, and other failed attempts, Smith finally discovered that her husband still had an old thumbnail photo on his phone. From that tiny image, she created a portrait embroidered onto a large bag her mother had requested for carrying a blanket to dialysis.

The gift became far more than a practical accessory. When her mom saw the finished portrait, she repeatedly touched the embroidery, lingering over the many stitches, and said, “I got my mama’s eyes . . . I’m beautiful.” Smith reassured her, “Yes, ma’am, you are. Why would you think you wasn’t, Mama?” The portrait stirred vivid childhood memories as her mom recalled her own parents, especially her father’s affectionate teasing about her large eyes. “She just took me on a journey,” Smith said. “It was just so vivid to her, and it was so clear to me.” Together, they shared tears and relived those memories, transforming the bag into a tangible reminder of love, family, and identity.

The bag remained by her mom’s side for the rest of her life. She carried it everywhere, refused to let anyone else handle it, and even slept with it beside her. For Smith, the project became a powerful reminder that her embroidery is about more than thread and fabric. It has the ability to preserve cherished memories, strengthen family bonds, and help people see themselves through the eyes of those who love them.

After her mom passed away, Smith unexpectedly lost the desire to create. For a long time, she couldn’t understand why. Eventually, she said, she asked God to show her what had changed.

The answer came through a simple realization. Every completed project had always ended the same way. No matter the hour, she would drive 20 minutes to her mom’s house just to share what she’d made. “Look, Mama,” she’d say excited and eager for her reaction. Smith’s mom delighted in every new creation, asking, “Trace, how’d you do this?” Somewhere along the way, sharing her work with her mom became a ritual and an inseparable part of her creative process. When her mom was gone, so was the person she most wanted to show, and without her there, Smith no longer felt the same motivation to sew.

Recognizing that connection helped restore her passion. Today, Smith pours the same love and joy into the work she creates for others. Seeing a customer’s excitement has become a reminder of the joy she once shared with her mother. She treasures every opportunity to witness customers’ reactions, knowing each finished piece carries her very best effort. “I know I gave it all I had, plus some,” she said. “Because I’m extra.”

That level of commitment extends to the projects she accepts. Smith rarely backs away from a challenge, even when it requires learning entirely new techniques. If someone brings her an idea involving textiles, her first instinct is to find a way to make it happen.

One of her latest commissions pushed those limits. A customer wanted a racing-themed design embroidered across the back of a jacket featuring his portrait, three race cars, lights, and lettering. Although it was unlike anything she had created before, Smith accepted the challenge. The finished piece required more than 114,000 stitches. Glowing with pride, she described it as “very extra.”

Her outlook is captured in a motto that reflects both her determination and her faith: “If you can show it, and I can see it, with God’s help, you bet we can achieve it.”

That perspective continues to shape her future. Smith dreams of becoming a full-time entrepreneur, but she believes success begins long before a business reaches that point. As she continues building her business, Smith remains focused on creating, learning, and “removing the clutter.” While developing the mindset needed for what lies ahead, she has learned not to measure success only by the destination. Instead, guided by perseverance, creativity, and faith, she keeps taking on new projects while working toward the future she envisions and stitching together not only remarkable works of art but also lasting memories for the people who receive them.

Looking back over the hardships she has overcome and the lives her work has touched, Smith has realized that embroidery has always been about more than just thread stitched into fabric. For her, it’s an expression of faith, a way of preserving memories, and a means of encouraging others, one carefully placed stitch at a time.