Embroidery 101 with Mel from Thrifted

Hello A is for Ampersand readers! I'm Mel from thrifted, and I'm here today on a mission to get you stitching! This post is for those of you who have never embroidered before; taking on a new craft can be a little intimidating with no instruction, so I hope this gets you to finally pick up the needle.

What you'll need:

The great thing about embroidery is that the required materials are really really basic.

1. You need thread to stitch with. It's best to start out with embroidery floss; DMC is by far my favorite brand, and it can be found at just about any craft store in just about any color. Embroidery floss is used most often in embroidery because you can pick how thick you want your strand to be. The floss is actually 6 threads twisted together, and after cutting a length of floss you can pull out individual threads until the floss is the thickness you'd like. I'd recommend starting out with a 3-strand floss.
Separate threads from the floss one at a time by grabbing one thread from the end of the floss, pinching the floss together about 1-2" from the end, and then pulling the thread away from where you're pinching. This way it won't tangle.

2. Fabric! You can use just about any type of woven (not knitted or stretchy) fabric for embroidery. I recommend starting out with a basic tight-weave cotton; think something that looks like a really high thread-count bedsheet. High thread counts are preferable because they allow for more detailed stitches. You can work on any color - or even on a print!

3. An embroidery hoop. These are used to keep your work tight while you embroider; you want the fabric to be as tightly stretched as possible, or the work will pucker around your stitches. Not pretty. To use the hoop, separate the inner and outer pieces, lay the inner piece on a flat surface, and place the fabric on top of the inner hoop. Then put the outer hoop on top of the fabric, fitting it around the inner hoop. Tighten the screw at the top of the hoop a little, and then stretch the fabric by pulling the edges away from the hoop all the way around. Tighten and stretch a few more times, until you can't tighten anymore. Once you start stitching, stop every 5-10 minutes to re-tighten the fabric.
Embroidery hoops are also a great way to easily "frame" your finished piece. Just leave it in the hoop when done, glue the excess fabric to the inner piece, and hang it on the wall!

4. Needles. You'll want needles with a large eye, so as to accommodate the embroidery floss. I also like a super-pointy tip.

Practice your stitches

I was going to create new stitch tutorials, but then I remembered that's already been done a thousand times on the internet. So here are the best tutorials for the basic stitches. (Don't worry; I didn't include any of those awful tutorials with tacky music and graphics! The crafting tutorial universe is so rife with those.)

(Note: I like my stitches to be shorter than 1/4", like she says in the video. It allows for more detail.)

(Feel free to ignore the bit about the split stitch! It's a tactic to get more volume and dimension, but satin stitch works just fine without it.)

(Alright, so this one's not as informative, but check out that manicure!)

Start stitching!

Now you're ready to start embroidering. If you don't want to tackle working on a design, start some freeform stitching. Just follow where your fingers lead, using your favorite colors and making your favorite shapes. Here are a few examples of abstract freeform embroidery that I like:

1: Recycled by Hyena, 2: davis.jaque, 3: made by me! Available here, 4. APPLIQUE-designedbyjane

If freeform doesn't sound like a party to you but you don't want to design your own pieces quite yet, there are plenty of places to buy iron-transfer embroidery designs. Aunt Martha's iron-on transfers are available at most craft stores if you like classic vintage designs, or you can buy Sublime Stitching transfers or books for something cute and modern. There are also quite a few options on etsy. You can also use the print on a fabric to base a design on; this is particularly awesome with vintage floral sheets.

There are dozens of ways to get your own original designs on fabric, but here are my favorite options:

1. Draw right on the fabric: You can use a regular pen or pencil if you're very careful while drawing and your stitches will be big enough to cover the marks, but it's safer to use a water-soluble pen or one with ink that disappears when exposed to heat. Here's what a really simple design looks like in water-soluble pen:

You can also use design transfer pens and tracing paper - this is a way to make your own iron-on transfers, so you can make sure your design is perfect before putting it on the fabric. But, if you're not careful, the ironing process can leave little splotches on your work that don't wash off.

My current favorite way to transfer a design onto fabric is to use a light box to trace directly on the fabric; you can also do this by taping your design on a window during bright sunlight, and then taping your fabric on top of the design so you can trace.

You can make an embroidery design from any picture or idea; but a good place to start looking for inspiration is in coloring books. Generally their images are simple enough to translate really well into basic embroidery.

If you're not inspired yet to get stitching, you can check out Mr. Xstitch, one of my all-time favorite embroidery blogs. There are also a lot of great flickr groups where people share their finished products.

And if you have any problems or questions with your embroidery projects, seriously feel free to ask me on my blog, or at melsundquist (at) gmail (dot) com! I'd love to help you get stitching. Thanks for reading!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Holy smokes, kids. Isn't Mel absolutely incredible? She's a local and new friend of mine, and I'm so happy to have her here today. Thank you Mel for this awesome intro to embroidery. I, for one, can't wait to try it!