The Resurgence Of Embroidery

One thing that we’ve found from working with embroidery is a huge resurgence in the classical art of embroidery. There are two basic types: machine and hand embroidery.

What Is Machine Embroidery?

This often involves using industrial machines to transfer a digitized image, such as a logo, onto a tshirt, hat or towel. The process starts with converting a picture or sketch to a digital version. This has to contain the instructions for the colours, patterns and stitches. The stitches shouldn’t be too long or you risk the whole thing falling apart.

Once the machine has the instructions, the machine does all the work stitching the image or logo onto the garment. See the video below for a demonstration:

Hand Embroidery

The main differences between machine and hand embroidery is the speed and craftmanship aspects. Whereas with machine embroidery, most of the work is in creating the pattern, when you do hand embroidery, you’ll spend most of the time stitching. People who do hand embroidery usually buy patterns already made up. You’ll need the right tools, but as long as you have an embroidery hoop and the right needles & thread, you’ll be fine.

Watch this video for a beginners’ demonstration of hand embroidery:

So why the resurgence? A lot of it has to do with the movement back towards most of the crafts. People, especially women, are spending their leisure time doing scrapbooking, sewing, embroidering, decorating cakes, and otherwise creating beautiful artwork. But don’t think it’s just the ladies getting into embroidery: don’t tell anyone, but there are more lads embroidering than you might first guess.

Whatever the cause of the resurgence of embroidery, we are glad it is making a comeback. It’s a low risk way, without much expense, for people to create beautiful artwork that can be used for pillows, tablecloths or other items. There’s a great joy in creating an amazing stitched work of art. Click here to learn more about the art of embroidery.