How to Use Embroidery to Spice Up Your Sewing

Whether you’re a beginner seamstress or an experienced sewing pro, you can always up the quality of your projects with one relatively simple trick; learn to use embroidery to add simple designs and touches.

Embroidery allows you to easily turn a plain piece of clothing into a unique and interesting end product. Even a simple tote bag or a hanging kitchen towel become much fancier and cuter with a nice embroidery design on it.

Of course, there are a few different kinds of embroidery, with varying degrees of complexity. You won’t be able to make the most difficult ones right away, but you can achieve some pretty good results on the first go- even if you’re a complete beginner in this field. So, are you ready to spice up your sewing?

Hand Embroidery

Embroidering by hand is more time consuming than doing it with a machine, but it has its perks nonetheless. The design you create is more personal because it requires a fair amount of time and effort. It’s also healthier because it helps you to improve your hand dexterity and hand-eye coordination. Best of all, it’s very easy and anyone can try it. You can go online and find all sorts of designs to choose from. Just download the one you like and you’re ready to go. You can also buy pre-made kits that have designs and all the colored threads required for making them.

Machine Embroidery

If you wish to do embroidery with a machine, you will have to get yourself an embroidery machine or an advanced sewing machine that is capable of doing embroidery stitching. This kind of embroidery offers you more possibilities when it comes to design complexity, and is much faster than hand embroidery. It has a (steep) learning curve that comes with a mix of agony and ecstasy, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pure happiness.

Applying embroidery to clothes can be a business in itself. People like to have unique garments. They will happily pay someone to turn their plain clothing into masterpieces with embroidery. If you opt to do this though, you should get an embroidery machine for home business. Janome MC500E is one of the best models on the market, providing embroidery enthusiasts with professional features that allow them to produce high-quality results.

Motifs

If you don’t enjoy making an entire embroidery on your own, you can just use a motif instead. They come in a few different styles, depending on the method of applying them to the fabric. Some are applied by ironing them, others are sewn onto the fabric, and some are simply glued.

Essentials for creating embroidery designs

• Stabilizer

This handy tool helps you to give your embroidery that professional look. It backs your fabric and makes the embroidery stand out and retain its shape.

• Hoop

You won’t be able to do much embroidery without this tool as it is the most important one for this kind of work. It stretches out the fabric and keeps it tight as you stitch. These hoops come in a lot of different shapes in sizes, make sure to choose one that is adequate for your needs.

• Adequate needle, thread, and (optional) machine

The best needle for embroidery is a ballpoint needle. It can pierce through most of the fabrics easily. Embroidery threads are obviously the best choice for embroidery. Choose a hand thread because it can be divided into separate strands. This allows you to adjust the weight of your stitches and make them stand out more or less, according to your desire.

Helpful Tips

• Applying embroidery before you put the garment together and while the pattern is flat will make your job much less difficult and you’ll be able to finish faster.
• Smaller designs that are not too complex are the best starting point for beginners.
• It’s best to first make a test embroidery on a small piece of fabric before you move on to the actual garment you want to embellish.

With this, you should be officially ready to start your embroidery adventures! Hope you enjoyed reading the article, do share your thoughts in the comment section below.

* You can access Helen’s site, hello sewing, here. Helen has so many good things on her blog for beginning seamstresses, like sewing machine product guides, and sewing 101 tutorials! Leave her a comment below, and she’ll get right back to you!

Happy Sewing!

Kristie