A Guide to Hand Embroidery

With hand embroidery, you can make beautiful and relaxing things. Anyone who is interested in colour and patterns will enjoy it. This art form has been around for a long time, but there’s no limit to how modern and unique it can be.

How to do hand embroidery, what you need, and some of the most common stitches you should learn are all here. You’ll also find some great hand-embroidery designs to get ideas from.

What Do You Need For Hand Embroidery?

There are things you need to learn how to do hand embroidery.

• Threads.
• A needle
• Fabric.
• In this case, the embroidery hoop.
• Scissors.
• hand-stitched patterns.
• Tracing sheet.
• Pencils, pens, or ink that fades away in a short amount of time

Threads for embroidering are thicker than regular cotton thread,

but they’re finer than the yarn used for knitting or crocheting so that they can be used for both knitting and crocheting. People who are good at embroidering like to play around with the threads they use. It makes sense to start with standard embroidery threads when you’re a beginner.

White or other light-colored fabric doesn’t have to be used for embroidering projects to work. You can even use patterned fabric to make your design look more interesting, though. Most of the time, embroidery works best on fabrics that don’t stretch, like cotton or linen.

Not all hand-embroidery projects need embroidery hoops, but they are a good idea. There are two things that help you keep your fabric in place while you’re stitching it.

Kits for hand embroidery can be bought at some craft stores. They come with everything you need to get started, but you can also buy each piece separately.

If you’re not making a design that comes straight from your head to the canvas, you’ll need a way to transfer a pattern on paper to your fabric. Most beginner-level embroidery tutorials give advice on how to transfer designs, and they usually say to use tracing paper, carbon paper, pencils, and vanishing ink to get the designs on the fabric.

What Are the Basic Embroidery Hand Stitches?

Learning how to do embroidery stitches by hand isn’t hard, even though it takes more time than machine embroidery. If you want to add more detail and interest to your work, it’s a good idea to learn a few more complicated hand embroidery stitches. Take intermediate or advanced-level embroidery classes to learn more complicated stitches beyond these simple ones.

Running Stitch

In all kinds of sewing, a running stitch is a simple stitch that is used. You can’t finish any hand-stitched patterns without this stitch.

Back Stitch

It looks like a running stitch, but it doubles back on itself to fill in the gaps between stitches.

Stem Stitch

You get a chain-like effect that’s good for making stems, outlines, and borders when you do this. A back stitch is similar to a stem stitch.

Chain Stitch

Chain stitches can be used to make borders or fill in large areas.

Couching Stitches

Couching stitches are long stitches that are held in place by other stitches. They’re one way to make curved lines without having to do a lot of small stitches.

Satin Stitch

Satin stitches are used to fill in large areas, and depending on the embroidery thread you use, they can look shiny.

Cross-Stitch

You make small crosses on a grid-textured canvas with thread when you cross-stitch. A separate art form, but cross stitches can also be used in other types of embroidery, such as on clothes or bags.

French Knots

French knots are small raised bobbles that give a project a unique look.

READ MORE: MACHINE EMBROIDERY GUIDE