Mini embroidery tutorial (sort of)
First I want to welcome
bokuwakumakuma to my friends list - muahaha, you're in for it now! I just wanted to say hi and welcome, since this post was inspired by you.
* * *
So today I would like to talk a little bit (only a little, since I'm a beginner myself!) about embroidery.
Ahhh, embroidery. How we love to hate you. But I think most of that fear stems from a simple lack of knowledge on how to work the stitches. Once you break everything down, it's really just geometric shapes and, well... stitches! Something I've found to take the edge off the fear for me is this wonderful book:
Stitch Dictionary, by Lucinda Ganderton.
I cannot recommend this book enough. It's about $35 to buy but it's worth easily twice that.
The true value in this book is the pictures. They have text instructions AND large, clear step-by-step pictorial instructions so that you know what your stitch is supposed to look like and how to build it. Each stitch is graded by difficulty (easy, intermediate, hard), have alternative names for those stitches that the crazy Americans like to call something totally different just to confuse us down here, uses for the stitch (border, open-work, etc) and suggested materials that would be ideal to embroider the stitch upon. But the pictures! Large, glossy, clear to read and understand pictures. Pictures pictures pictures! (I know I'm going on about these pictures but really, they just make it so easy to use! I love them!)
The beginning of the book also covers materials, tools and techniques. Different ways to mount your work so you get the right tension on your material without embossing hoop marks into it. What types of thread you can use. Different types of material (canvas, evenweave, aida cloth). Different kinds of needles, how to prepare your thread, starting and ending a thread in your work.
A reference book like this really helps to remove that "oh my god, where do I start? How do they even expect me to take this squiggly piece of thread and turn it into a a sewn 'picture'?!" fear and nervousness. It strips embroidery down into it's base elements and then it's really not so scary anymore.
So do yourself a favour and go and buy this book. $35 for over 200 stitches and general embroidery know-how is a pretty good deal, I reckon!
* * *
Now, onto the mini-tute!
How to embroider, using a pre-drawn template or pattern:
I'm sure there are more techniques than the 3 I've tried but since I don't know of any more than those three and certainly don't have experience using them, I'm just going to talk about the 3 I DO know.
1.
Draw your pattern / drawing / obscene picture onto your material using some tailors chalk or a washable marker or disappearing marker.
I'm not such a big fan of this method for a few reasons: I can never get my chalk to a fine enough point that I can get the detail I want, and I tend to rub it off as I'm working. Also, most of the embroidered pieces I've done so far, I've used white thread for. Coloured chalk tends to rub off onto the white thread as you pull it up and down through your material. I could use a marker but those things are expensive and I'm still a poor student (please deposit all donations to your left!)
2.
Draw your design onto tracing paper (I use Glad bake paper 'cause I stole it from the kitchen), pin it to your material and whack an embroidery hoop around it and you're good to go. When you're done, just rip the paper away. It's a little time consuming, but not too hard. The paper will tear easily around the outlines of your design, and to clear away around intricate details I just use the point of the needle to scrape the paper away from the thread, or slip the needle between material and paper to pry it up.
3.
If you can find some very loose-weave linen (something that looks like this, only it's not burlap. But see what I mean about the EXTREMELY open weave of the material?) and cut it big enough so that it's an inch larger than the diameter of your design. Draw onto the open weave cloth, then stitch it onto your material where you want to embroider with a running stitch. This becomes not only your template, but also a grid so that you get nice even stitches. To remove, simply trim close to the edge of your embroidery, and then pull out the stitches one by one.
bokuwakumakuma to my friends list - muahaha, you're in for it now! I just wanted to say hi and welcome, since this post was inspired by you.
* * *
So today I would like to talk a little bit (only a little, since I'm a beginner myself!) about embroidery.
Ahhh, embroidery. How we love to hate you. But I think most of that fear stems from a simple lack of knowledge on how to work the stitches. Once you break everything down, it's really just geometric shapes and, well... stitches! Something I've found to take the edge off the fear for me is this wonderful book:
Stitch Dictionary, by Lucinda Ganderton.
I cannot recommend this book enough. It's about $35 to buy but it's worth easily twice that.
The true value in this book is the pictures. They have text instructions AND large, clear step-by-step pictorial instructions so that you know what your stitch is supposed to look like and how to build it. Each stitch is graded by difficulty (easy, intermediate, hard), have alternative names for those stitches that the crazy Americans like to call something totally different just to confuse us down here, uses for the stitch (border, open-work, etc) and suggested materials that would be ideal to embroider the stitch upon. But the pictures! Large, glossy, clear to read and understand pictures. Pictures pictures pictures! (I know I'm going on about these pictures but really, they just make it so easy to use! I love them!)
The beginning of the book also covers materials, tools and techniques. Different ways to mount your work so you get the right tension on your material without embossing hoop marks into it. What types of thread you can use. Different types of material (canvas, evenweave, aida cloth). Different kinds of needles, how to prepare your thread, starting and ending a thread in your work.
A reference book like this really helps to remove that "oh my god, where do I start? How do they even expect me to take this squiggly piece of thread and turn it into a a sewn 'picture'?!" fear and nervousness. It strips embroidery down into it's base elements and then it's really not so scary anymore.
So do yourself a favour and go and buy this book. $35 for over 200 stitches and general embroidery know-how is a pretty good deal, I reckon!
* * *
Now, onto the mini-tute!
How to embroider, using a pre-drawn template or pattern:
I'm sure there are more techniques than the 3 I've tried but since I don't know of any more than those three and certainly don't have experience using them, I'm just going to talk about the 3 I DO know.
1.
Draw your pattern / drawing / obscene picture onto your material using some tailors chalk or a washable marker or disappearing marker.
I'm not such a big fan of this method for a few reasons: I can never get my chalk to a fine enough point that I can get the detail I want, and I tend to rub it off as I'm working. Also, most of the embroidered pieces I've done so far, I've used white thread for. Coloured chalk tends to rub off onto the white thread as you pull it up and down through your material. I could use a marker but those things are expensive and I'm still a poor student (please deposit all donations to your left!)
2.
Draw your design onto tracing paper (I use Glad bake paper 'cause I stole it from the kitchen), pin it to your material and whack an embroidery hoop around it and you're good to go. When you're done, just rip the paper away. It's a little time consuming, but not too hard. The paper will tear easily around the outlines of your design, and to clear away around intricate details I just use the point of the needle to scrape the paper away from the thread, or slip the needle between material and paper to pry it up.
3.
If you can find some very loose-weave linen (something that looks like this, only it's not burlap. But see what I mean about the EXTREMELY open weave of the material?) and cut it big enough so that it's an inch larger than the diameter of your design. Draw onto the open weave cloth, then stitch it onto your material where you want to embroider with a running stitch. This becomes not only your template, but also a grid so that you get nice even stitches. To remove, simply trim close to the edge of your embroidery, and then pull out the stitches one by one.
