My Best Embroidery tips (and such) in 2013

So, just in case you missed a few of my more practical posts this year, I made a 'best of' selection for you.

At the start of the year I posted some ideas of how to embroider a 'basket-like' effect. On (or around) my birthday I posted a Free-bee pattern. I re-acquainted myself with the Stem Stitch and made a tutorial for you. There were lots of useful comments for storing patterns (both printed and pdf patterns) on my post about Pattern Hoarding. And there will definitely be a follow up to my Embroidery Aha moments post as I have a lot more floss and stitch tips to share so look out for that in 2014.

I got a little reflective in my posts about slow crafting and originality. Maybe these posts can be of some use to you as well. :)

Wishing you all a safe New Years eve and I hope to see you all back here in 2014!

5 Embroidery Aha moments

There are several simple things I learned about embroidery in the past years that I wished I knew when I started. So today I thought I'd share them with you. It's possible you know most of the things I'm about to mention but maybe you don't in which case you learned something new today, yay!

1. Know about the nap. It will help prevent tangling for example. Floss, and I'm talking the widely used six stranded floss, has a nap. If you run thread between your index finger and thumb one way and then the other you will feel a difference. There's a 'smooth' way and one that feels less smooth. Sometimes it can be quite tricky to feel the difference and I find, this sounds and probably looks ridiculous too, that closing my eyes while running the thread between my fingers makes the process easier. When you are threading your needle you want the smooth way to go in first.

2. Split your threads the right way. I rarely use all six threads of six stranded floss and most of the time embroider with just one or two threads. When you split the floss into separate threads to stitch with two threads or more, take care to first split the floss into six threads and then re-assemble the threads.

3. Use a needle that suits the type of embroidery you are doing. Obviously you are allowed to have a favourite type of needle that you use for al lot of your stitching but it can be very useful to have different types of needles on hand. Milliner's needles for French and Bullion Knots, a blunt needle for threading techniques like the threaded backstitch, small sharps for stitching with just a single thread etc etc.

4. Be a snob about your choice of floss. In the past I have had disappointing experiences with hand-dyed thread (pretty but definitely not colour fast) and fake DMC thread (yes, it exists!) bought at a market in rural France. I almost exclusively use DMC threads which is definitely a reliable brand but in the past have also happily embroidered with Anchor floss and Sublime Stitching floss.

5. Are you a floss-licker? Don't eat a chocolate cookie right before you start embroidering  ;)

Do you have a favourite Embroidery 'Aha- moment' too? I'd love to know maybe I will learn something new too!

p.s. don't forget about the special offer for my new Most Excellent Party Bear pattern!