I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more
Contact Mary
I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more
Contact Mary
January 21, 2014
It’s been a while since we last glimpsed this red-on-white, never-ending, ever-present, long-neglected project of mine – the Hungarian Redwork Runner.
It’s called the Hungarian Redwork Runner not because it’s technically Hungarian redwork. It’s a Hungarian design, worked entirely in red, with two stitches only: the chain stitch and the Hungarian braided chain stitch.
January 20, 2014
I’ve been using chain stitch a lot lately!
And there’s good reason for that. First of all, chain stitch is a versatile stitch, great for outlining. But chains stitch also makes a wonderful filling stitch.
Besides its versatility, there’s the whole Easy Thing going on. It’s one of the basic embroidery stitches, easy to work for any level of embroiderer.
Besides exploring chain stitch in tambour embroidery, I’ve been using the regular surface embroidery stitch called chain stitch (with a needle) on the Hungarian redwork runner that I started eons ago. There’s a lot of chain stitch on that piece – mostly in the form of squiggly or curly lines.
Did you know that you can speed up chain stitch a little bit – especially when working curls and swirls on line patterns – by switching to reverse chain stitch?
Reverse chain stitch looks exactly like chain stitch, but it works up in reverse. Let me show you how:
January 18, 2014
Time to do a little organizing!
If you’re following the Secret Garden Hummingbirds project that will develop in 2014 here on Needle ‘n Thread, you might want to bookmark this page.
January 17, 2014
A few years ago, these Hungarian embroidery patterns began to appear on Needle ‘n Thread. If you haven’t read about them and how they came to be here, you can read the backstory of this collection of patterns in this article, which features the first pattern offered, which I called “Golden Circle.”
Mary Martin of Larkspur Stitchery on Facebook stitched up Lilly’s Golden Circle design in blackwork. She did a fantastic job, and I love the way she adapted the design for blackwork.
I thought it would be fun to share her Hungarian blackwork piece with you, in hopes that it might inspire you, too!
January 16, 2014
Quite a while ago, when I was writing about tambour embroidery, a reader asked about a tool in my tool box that showed up in one of my photos.
Well, I would have answered the tool question a little more clearly and directly, except that, in all honesty, I didn’t know what the tool was called.
Sometimes, I call it a Tucker Tool. Sometimes, I call it a Tweaker. Sometimes, I call it by its long name (invented by me) – it’s a Thread-Tucker-Tweaker-Fixer-Thingy.
Not knowing its official name made it somewhat difficult to look up, but I did eventually find it online. I discovered that it has an official name – it is a Stitch Fixer.
I wasn’t too far off!
Let me introduce you to this handy tool that’s been in my box for years, and that I use All the Time, for All Kinds of Things.
January 15, 2014
Or should I call this preliminary preliminaries? Whatever the case…
We’ll mark today as the official start date of this series on an embroidery project based on a design by Johanna Basford, from her book Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book, which I mentioned to you in December.
To start off, I’ll show you my preliminary steps in preparing to think about embroidering the design I chose from Secret Garden, and I’ll tell you what you can expect in this kind of step-by-step project development on Needle ‘n Thread.
January 14, 2014
Being a lover of all things Bayeux-Tapestry-related, I think it’s ok to share this article with you, even though it’s technically not about embroidery.
Well, I take that back. It is about embroidery – it’s about how a piece of embroidery from a thousand years ago helped an artisan today.
The story comes from the Daily Mail online, and it tells of a wood carver who, to overcome the grief of losing his sixteen-year-old son, turned to the Bayeux tapestry – with carving tools.
