Tour Embroidery Artist Sarah K. Benning’s Colorful 1873 Victorian Home

When embroidery artist Sarah K. Benning and her husband, Davey, bought an 1873 Victorian home in Keene, New Hampshire, in 2018, the first thing Sarah did was begin painting. “Everything was butter yellow,” she says with a rueful chuckle. Still, she claims it was love at first sight. Though parts of the spacious home are still works in progress — like the second-floor stairwell, still butter yellow — after only a few years Sarah and Davey have definitely made their mark on the space. Sarah started creating embroidery art in 2013, right after college. Her apartment at the time didn’t look anything like this, Sarah says, so she used her embroidery to envision the space she dreamed of living in one day, a home filled with plants and midcentury modern furniture. In Keene, she was able to begin making that vision a reality. “Before moving here, we’ve never really had a space that we’ve had control over, in terms of hanging artwork or painting walls,” Sarah says. We recently visited Sarah’s home for an “Open Studio” feature on her artwork, which appears in Yankee’s May/June 2020 issue. If you’re curious to see how her art reflects her home (and vice versa), scroll on for our bonus photos of her eclectic abode.