Kits for surface embroidery projects are sometimes pretty hard to come by. They’re even tough to find in local needlework shops, although occasionally you can find some nice crewel kits in shops that carry a wide variety of needlework supplies and that cater to a variety of techniques. But mostly, if you want surface embroidery kits, often you have to go straight to the designer.

For those of you who like to work kits that employ traditional surface embroidery techniques, I thought I’d point out Roseworks Embroidery Designs, a company out of South Africa that sells a whole plethora of surface embroidery kits.

Here’s a little collection of simple hand embroidery designs from Grace Christie’s book, Samplers and Stitches, which you can find online for free. Now, you may be wondering why I would bother putting together a collection of images that come out of a free online book. There are a couple reasons…

Koala Conventions is a business in Australia devoted to putting together pretty spectacular needlework events. Twice a year in Australia, they host workshops that pull in some of the best tutors from Australia and around the world. The workshops cover a huge variety of techniques, and they look deliciously tempting and downright fun!

This is where I’ll collect all the posts on developing an embroidered spot sampler, so that you have easy access to each post, and so that they can be viewed in order. You’ll find a link to this post (the index for the spot sampler project) under Tips & Techniques, too. If you haven’t visited my Tips & Techniques page, you might want to check it out. That’s where I list articles on Needle ‘n Thread that either teach a specific technique, or that index various series of articles on a whole project.

Selecting colors of threads for an embroidery project can be a pretty daunting task! On the bright side, when it comes to working a spot sampler, you aren’t restricted in the same way as you would be if you were embroidering, for example, a picture.

I’ll tell you right off the bat that I’m no expert in color theory! But I’ll show you how I went about selecting colors for the spot sampler, in case it helps.

For those interested in following the Spot Sampler that I’m currently developing with my Needle Arts Class, I’ll be publishing a Spot Sampler Series over the next several weeks. If you are interested in developing your own “learning sampler,” you’re welcome to stitch along at your own pace, using these mini-tutorials as they develop.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of other ways of working your own sampler. Here, I’m simply outlining how I’ve been developing mine. These are just loose ideas that you can adapt and alter to fit your own style!