mikayla kurkjian portfolio

united states

Mikayla Kurkjian (she/her) is a self-taught needlelace maker upholding the traditions of her foremothers. Her grandmother Mariam Kurkjian and great-grandmother Haiganoush Minassian were prolific needleworkers and expert needlelace makers. But like in so many other families, the skill was not passed down to Mikayla’s generation.

Mikayla began learning Armenian needlelace when she was nineteen, the summer her grandmother Mariam passed away. Mikayla grew up watching her grandmother crochet and embroider, and Mariam had assured her that she would teach her how to make lace at some point in the future. Although her grandmother displayed much of her needlework prominently in the home, Mikayla’s family did not discover the collection of needlelace that Mariam and Haiganoush had made until after she passed away. It had been stored in the back corner of a dresser drawer under piles of cloth napkins and table mats.

The discovery was the first time Mikayla had seen Armenian needlelace in person, and in the months that followed, she became consumed by the desire to learn. This was a personal choice, but Mikayla also felt, and continues to feel, an obligation to be a cultural custodian. While an undergraduate student, she had little time to devote to lace making, but the sudden abundance of free time in 2020 allowed her to start practicing in earnest.

Color image of needlelace and bobbin drawn designs and samples — Mikayla Kurkjian, drawings of spider patterns in bobbin lace and needlelace overlaid with pattern samples, 2024–2025. Mikayla is experimenting in overlapping needlelace and bobbin lace design elements. Photo credit: @ Mikayla Kurkjian 2025.

Shortly after Mikayla’s grandmother passed away, her cousins gifted her with a copy of the Priscilla Armenian Lace Book. She supplemented her learning resources with Ashley’s Youtube videos on Become Inspired and later studied Lusine Mkhitaryan's and Alice Odian Kasparian’s instructional books. Mikayla spends copious hours studying photographs of lace, meticulously drawing the designs, and making pattern samples. She takes inspiration from her family’s lace collection, other Armenian embroidery books, and photographs of museum pieces.

Mikayla is currently working on a project—a follow up to a piece she showed at Threadlines, the 2025 SWANA Stitch group show for Portland Textile Month. A faithful re-creation of two medallions from a needlelace table covering that her grandmother Mariam made, her piece was titled “My Grandmother Before Me.” The current work will eventually become a table runner with multiple medallions and her intention for future work is to create a series of interpretations of her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s work.

In the background, Mikayla is also working on several individual doilies and has been trying her hand at making three-dimensional lace chickens. As a trained engineer, she is intrigued by the complexities of how things work and will try most crafts at least once. Armenian embroidery (Marash, Aintab, and Svaz), cross stitch, knitting, crochet, and sewing are in her regular rotation; as a result, she has at least a dozen ongoing projects at any given time.

Her grandmother’s death was a turning point in her life. That moment precipitated an existential crisis; she thought deeply about how easily knowledge held in our hands dies with us. She realized that handcrafts often become simplified over time and the original skills become “historical”—both technically difficult and expensive in time and materials to duplicate. Mikayla is determined to develop, hold, and transmit Armenian needlelace skills at the level that her grandmother and great-grandmother had achieved—to keep alive the traditional techniques in the present and pass them into the future.

Mikayla teaches in-person workshops on a limited basis in the Washington DC metropolitan area and demonstrates Armenian needlelace at local events with the Chesapeake Region Lace Guild. She does not currently offer virtual workshops but is available for private virtual teaching. Mikayla feels at times uncomfortable profiting from her culture when it is challenging in the English-speaking diaspora to learn to make needlelace, but she also believes labor merits compensation.

Mikayla is Armenian on her father’s side; her ancestors were originally from Kharpert, Dikranagerd (present-day Diyarbakır), and Elbistan (in present-day Kahramanmaraş province, known as Marash until 1973). Members of her paternal families immigrated to Brazil and the United States. Her grandparents met in Michigan in 1964 and were married in 1965 in Brazil before settling in the Detroit area. Mikayla was born in 1998, grew up in Texas, and currently lives near Washington DC. Though she is the only active lacemaker in her family, she has taught several relatives to make lace and they support her mission.