Session 2: Tools of the Trade

All right, we're gonna have quick overview of all the tools you need to complete any embroidery project. Luckily, there's not that many you need. So first off, let's talk about needles. You should probably look for embroidery needles. They're a bit longer than your average needle, and a bit thicker in girth.

They also have slightly larger eyes, which means it's easier to put your floss through, and you're gonna have the floss which may have up to six strands, so a larger eye is helpful for that. Now you might find yourself wanting to use one of these needle threaders, which this one is pretty fancy because it has this version for small-eyed needles, this version for large, or medium-eyed needles, and this version for very large needles. I have yet to find the needle that will fit through yet, but maybe someday. So if you wanna use one of these to thread your needle, all you have to do is pick up your needle off the table, put the little middle portion through, and then you put your thread through here. So we could use a little bit of this floss, and we'll just clip some off.

So this is only three strands of floss, which we'll go over that in just a moment. You would just put your floss through so that it goes through the little diamond shape. And now you see it popped right on, but if you're having any trouble pulling it off, hold right here, hold the actual wires. If you just pull, it will pull the wires out of the holder, and you'll break your super cool little floss threader. So that's all you have to do, then you just pull the needle down until that comes out, and pull this off.

So needle threaders can be pretty handy. They get into tight spaces, and you don't have to do one of those lick it and stick it sort of things. Though, if you prefer that method of threading your needles, I've always heard that licking the needle as opposed to the thread is a good idea because it will stick to the needle, and go straight through the hole, so I'd give it a shot. So those are needles. You might also want a thimble.

In general, I only use my thimble when I'm, if I was doing something through a very thick fabric, just so that you can push it on. There are a couple of different forms. This is sort of a little plastic-y thimble here, it's maybe silicone and you can put it on any fingertip. They come in a variety of sizes and colors, they're pretty cute. And then this is a leather thimble that goes all the way on your finger.

It's pretty stretchy. It could fit pretty much any finger, and I think it gives you a lot of protection. When you're poking yourself, you're actually just poking this leather, so that works out nicely. And you may want a thimble, you may not, it's up to you. Now, in addition to needles, obviously you need thread or floss.

If you're doing crewel work, you're actually going to use wool floss, or any, I mean, in general, crewel floss is 100% wool. You might be able to find it in other versions, but this is wool floss or crewel yarn essentially. You can see, it's a very thin yarn that's woven tightly, and you'll just do these same stitches we've been working with, but with your yarn. There's pearl cotton, which is similar to the floss, except it's tight, more tightly wound, and it's a bit thicker, but you can choose to use that. You can get floss in all different colors.

I've been collecting floss probably since I started making friendship bracelets in middle school, so I have quite a bit. You can see, there's all sorts of varieties. You can get variegated flosses, basic plain colors or metallic floss. Here I have some gold metallic. It comes like this in skeins of floss, but I like to store mine in this box that I've organized by color.

As such, I needed to keep it on these little floss bobbins, and they're not that hard to wind one up, but you can see, sometimes when you keep it on the bobbin, it will sort of pleat the floss. That's not actually going to affect your embroidery at all. That'll come out as you work with it. So some people say that it creases the floss, and it permanently damages it, but I haven't really ever had any problems with it, and I've been embroidering, well, for quite a while now, so. And organizing your floss, there's lots of different ways.

I like to keep mine in this box. I like to wind it on the bobbins when I get it. Other people prefer to keep it in the skeins, though sometimes pulling it out means that it's going to knot up on you, so there's that. Others take it and wrap it around their fingers, so that they just have a little loop of it and hang that on hooks or any other place you might hang those little loops to keep it safe, or maybe washi tape it so that they stay that way. There's all different types of ways to keep your floss, but you want to keep it basically in sort of a covered situation, so that it doesn't get a lot of dust on it in between uses.

All right, so that's floss. Now, the next thing you're gonna need is simply scissors. I like to have thread snips around, which there's these little ones that are kinda handy if you're taking it with you because they fold up and they're easy to take on the plane, or whatever. They fold up nice and easy, as I said, as you can see. There you go.

And then there's other little ones that are cute, 'cause they look like a little bird. I love them, but they do, they sort of squeak when I use them sometimes, and I'm always afraid I'll lose them. I see a lot of people put them on a chain around their neck, which is cute, so you could try that. In general, you also will need to cut your fabric before you use it, unless you're using a ready made item, such as a dish cloth. If you're working with your fabric in the hoop, and you know that it's going to take you a while to finish your project, I like to use pinking shears.

The pinking shears will actually make it so that all the edges of the fabric are nice and pinked and they won't unravel as you work. So you can see I've done that to this fabric here, and I find that pinking shears come in handy for that and a lot of other uses, so it's a good investment to make if you're planning on embroidering or sewing regularly. So speaking of fabric, you do need fabric. You can actually embroider on almost any type of fabric out there. You could, in general, it's easiest to work on cotton wovens and you can pick those up wherever you want.

You could look in the quilting section, you can look in the broadcloth section. It's pretty simple. In general, though, you are going to want to interface your fabric or put a stabilizer on it. So I like to use lightweight woven stabilizers, as you can see on this side. There's also these lightweight interfacings that are kind of, they're pressed together and they're not woven.

It'll work fine, but sometimes you'll find your needle gets stuck in it, so I probably would recommended the woven interfacing than the pressed one. It comes in a lot of different varieties and these ones, this one's a tearaway stabilizer that you would use spray adhesive to stick to your fabric before you hooped it. And when you're done, it just tears really easy, and you can just rip it off, and you're ready to go. And then this is cutaway stabilizer, which is very tough. And you, when you use it, you again, will spray adhesive it and stick it to the wrong side of your fabric.

And when you're finished, you'll just cut away all the portions that you didn't stitch through, and it will keep those stitches nice and secure for years and years to come. I recommend stabilizing all your fabric before you stitch it, but not everyone does, and their stitches turn out fine. Their projects look pretty good. If you're doing a knit though, it is very important to stabilize your fabric, because the knit will stretch as you stitch, it'll stretch in the hoop. So stabilize it and hoop only where the stabilizer is, so that you can stitch it out and have it look good when you're finished and down the road.

So the only thing, well, there's two things left, hoops and designs. So first, let's talk about hoops. There are all different types of hoops out there. There are old hoops, there are new hoops, there are fancy hoops, there are less fancy hoops. This is kind of an older hoop that you can see has this cork on the inside to protect the fabric from the rim and a spring closure mechanism, which is pretty exciting.

I got that at a antique store, so it's pretty fun, and I've used it, it works fine. In general, it's better to have a lipped hoop than an unlipped hoop, so this hoop has no lip to it. You can see, I pull it apart and it's just a band of wood and another band of wood, and because there's no lip that it actually, the fabric can slide out of it pretty easily, I recommend using a lipped hoop, at least for your first few projects. Now these guys are good to keep around though, because they're pretty cheap. They, I think, maybe are a dollar a piece and you can display your projects in them once you're finished.

Now, as for lipped hoops, this is a kind of a specialty one I picked up, because it has a lip right in the middle. So you can see there's a groove there that the inner lip inside this fits inside, and that's, it's one of the most secure hoops I've ever used. It hoops it very well and keeps it tight while you work on it, and I prefer to use this one. You don't have to have that type. You can get one of these guys, which I think are Susan Bates.

You'll find these at any craft store. So they come in different shapes and sizes. They also have a lip. So when I pull it off, you can see that there's this really thin lip right there that is going to stick out over the edge of my hoop, and in fact, it says this side up to remind me, that's the side with the lip, and you want to make sure that it goes into the hoop properly. So it goes in like so, and you tighten it with your fingers.

If you have any problems with your, with grasping in your hands, you can get yourself a pair of pliers, and use that to close your hoop, if you want. Other people have told me that you can use, say, a thimble to get a better grip because it, it grips on better than, say, your skin does, and tighten it down that way. But if you have any sort of grasping problems, it's good to keep these things around so that you can hoop up your fabric nice and easy. Now, the last thing we need to talk about is a design. If you're going to be creating embroidery, you need some sort of design.

You can get a design from anywhere you want. You can draw your own design, you can pick up these little designs that are super cute. These are iron on transfer designs, and I'll show you how those work in just a moment. When you use these, you just cut it out and you iron it on. They come in all different sets.

Aunt Martha's has been around for years and years and years, and you can find all different types. There's this new one, Stitcher's Revolution, that I found recently, but there's all different brand ones out there. So look around, find one that you like. You may also just want to draw something and transfer that to your fabric. That's not that hard to do and I'll show you how to do that.

You might want to pick up actually a sampler, and samplers are actually a very traditional form of embroidery. Women would complete them so that they could make a visual dictionary of their stitches. This would show everything they knew how to do, and it would remind them how to do that stitch. So this is a cute one that I picked up from an Etsy shop. The young, the shop was called Drop Cloth, and she actually just prints your design directly onto your fabric, and then you can just give a try to all these different stitches.

And as you can see, she has several here. It's a fun take on it, but you don't need to buy any sort of design, because we are going to be working on our sampler pattern, and this sampler is provided in the downloadable content, and it covers all the different stitches we're going to use. So that's the design we'll be working with today, but don't hesitate to get a different design that you prefer. Now that we've gone over all the tools and we know what we need to gather up to get started, let's go ahead and start looking at how to transfer your designs to your fabric. So stay tuned and we'll look at that right away.