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
March 22, 2011
Cottage Garden Threads is a “home-grown” Australian thread dyeing business. It’s one of those stories I just like reading about – a lady who started dyeing threads in her kitchen, and now carries a wide range of beautifully colored threads that are stocked in retail shops and used by needlework designers.
March 21, 2011
Remember these paper and fabric boxes that I made a few weeks ago, using the Silhouette cutting machine?
March 18, 2011
Just a quick little update this morning on the miniature embroidery project I’m currently working on, so that you can see how far my 15 Minute Approach took me this week. Not very far!
March 17, 2011
Today, I’m very excited to start a little series here on Needle ‘n Thread that features some Hungarian designs suitable for embroidery and other artistic pursuits. There’s a little background story here about the artist’s legacy, so I’d like to share that with you, along with a pattern that has lots of possibilities for stitching.
March 16, 2011
Yesterday, we looked at how to embroider a satin stitched dot, which is not as easy a task as it sounds, but once the general layout of the stitches in the top layer of satin stitch is understood, it sure makes it a lot easier to achieve a nice looking satin stitched dot.
One thing I failed to mention in that tutorial – being too caught up in the finished satin stitched top, rather than what was going on underneath – is that the padding of the dot is not actually “satin stitched.” Thanks to Carol-Anne of Threads Across the Web, who followed up the original post with a very informative comment about padding in Japanese embroidery, I decided I better complete the dot tutorial by clarifying the method of padding the dot.
And so, today, in a somewhat reversed order, I’ll show you how I do the padding for a satin stitch dot, and really for any area of satin stitch where I don’t want a layer of padding as thick as the padding on the front of the work, on the back of the work. Make sense? Let me show you!
March 15, 2011
The satin stitch is one of my favorite filling stitches for small areas and narrow elements in embroidery. While it is absolutely a gorgeous stitch worked in silk, really, in any thread, it’s beautiful.
Perhaps the most difficult element to stitch well in satin stitch is a circle or larger dot. A wee tiny dot in satin stitch isn’t so difficult – it’s really just a matter of stitching two or three tiny stitches the same size and two slightly smaller stitches on each side of those, to give the look of a dot, without it actually being a perfect circle.
But those are wee tiny dots (an 1/8″ or smaller). But what about larger dots? Once you get the hang of them, they’re actually pretty easy! Here, I’d like to show you how I satin stitch larger dots or circular elements.
March 14, 2011
This is one of the questions I receive via e-mail quite often, and I figured I may as well put it on the website, just in case there are other stitchers out there wondering the same thing.
How do you embroider the little red cross that is traditionally found on most church altar linens? Normally, this cross is quite small and is actually cross stitched. While it doesn’t have to be cross-stitched, and while it doesn’t have to follow this pattern, this is a typical pattern that is very neat and tidy, tiny, and pretty, and it serves its purpose well.
