Recently, we’ve been talking about using silk thread for hand embroidery. My hope is that this short series of articles will help encourage stitchers to give silk a try (if you haven’t already tried it, or you’re intimidated by it), or to encourage you to try different types of silk embroidery threads.

First, we discussed getting started with silk thread, focusing on stranded, spun silk, which behaves much the same way as stranded cotton, with the advantage of having a nicer luster, a softer “spread” and a natural sheen.

Then, we looked at filament silks, particularly twisted filament silk. In that article, we discussed what filament silk is (compared to spun silk), I provided some links to tips on how to stitch with it and to some examples of embroidery worked with filament silk, and we discussed brands and resources.

Today, we’re going to talk about flat silk, which is untwisted (or so barely twisted you can’t see the twist) filament silk.

We’ll discuss what it is and what it’s like to stitch with, I’ll refer you to some examples of embroidery worked with it, you can peruse a list of articles for further explorations, and I’ll give you a list of resources in case you want to jump into embroidering with flat silk!