Embroidery embellishment

Designing for embroidery by hand or machine.

Embroidery embellishment can turn your quilt into an ornate and exquisite treasure. Freestyle embroidery can be learnt fairly easily if you have an eye for simple design and can do a couple of embroidery stitches and some wiggly lines with your machine. No frames are needed. Historical textiles all over the world can be found with embroidery embellishment. All sorts of patterns and shapes have been added to bedspreads, clothes and quilts. The V&A in London have a fascinating collection. Almost any repeated pattern works well so long as the pattern is not so large that it makes the quilt design look insignificant, or so small that the quilt design looks too bold. Beads and shisha mirrors can be added and gold thread can be couched on to the work.

Follow these simple steps and see how easy it is.

• Take a piece of plain paper and draw around some of the templates. Repeat on two more sheets.
• Doodle a collection of patterns- circles, squares, triangles or any other patterns that you like onto the shapes. Cover all three sheets with patterns.
• Doodle some squiggles and patterns onto the background areas of the paper.
• From the three sheets you should have some patterns that you particularly like. You may want to choose the best of these and cover another sheet of paper until you have your final designs.
  Copy your designs onto a scrape of fabric using machine and/or embroidery stitches.
• Don’t worry about copying them exactly.

Freestyle embroidery is a little like painting. Each person’s style will be unique. When I am stitching in this way I find that if I am enjoying myself the stitching works out well, but if I'm stressed or cross the stitches seem to follow suit! Keep repeating this exercise until you are happy with the results on the scrap fabric. Alternatively follow the included embellishment details on the templates. Again don’t worry about being very accurate. Simply applying the threads to the silk looks attractive just keep the stitching light.

Embroidery embellishment - stitching onto your quilt.

If you want to embellish using your machine use metallic or rayon threads on top and invisible thread on your bobbin (invisible thread is cheaper). Now that all the fabrics are securely stitched together you can pull quite hard twisting and turning a line. You need to stitch at a fast speed.

Keep the zig zag stitch light (not to close together or to wide). Otherwise you might over power the quilt with heavy lines. You can build up to a lot of stitching overall but it is better to build it in layers of fine work. I like to use a mixture of machine and hand embroidery. The embellishment is definitely my favorite part. It can be added slowly layer upon layer. I may add spiral patterns to the whole quilt, and then add a layer of couching in between the spirals. I could then decide to add French knots inside the spirals. This is what I mean by layering.

If you want to stitch by hand use French knots or cross stitch as spots on insect wings and flower centers, twisted chain to create swirling lines on the animals or on the base fabric.

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