Embroidery and Its Types

Embroidery! That’s a thing that almost every woman loves.  It’s a specialized craft that has been practiced and treasured by most women since time immemorial, and it’s worth noting that unlike the other early crafts on earth, embroidery still remains to be one of the most interesting and pleasurable pastimes available.  Yes, it is practiced until these days.

Embroidery is basically defined as the art of needlework.  It is classified as a handicraft which involves designing and decorating certain materials like fabric, with stitches.  The stitches are usually designed in strands with the use of a needle.  It is for this fact that embroidery is often considered by many as the “art of needlework”.

Although embroidery uses fabric as its common material, people who have passions for it often incorporate the art with other materials, including beads, metal strips, sequins, quills, and pearls.  These materials are incorporated as part of the design simply to enhance the look of the finished product. 

Embroidery comes in a number of types.  The types are basically considered according to the fundamental fabric used in the craft, as well as to the way the stitches are placed on the fabric.  One of the most well-known types is the so-called “free embroidery”.

Free embroidery involves the use of different designs that are placed on to the fabric regardless of how the underlying fabric is weaved.  How the Chinese do their embroidery is one concrete example of this kind.

There is also the counted-thread type which involves certain patterns that are designed with stitches placed over a line of prearranged threads in the underlying fabric.  This type is often crafted on a canvas or cloth.  Linen and cotton fabrics can also be used for this specialized craft.  If you are doing a cross-stitch, then you are doing the counted-thread embroidery.

Note that there are also several experts who classify embroidery according to the location of the stitches, whether on top or through the fabric.  In this classification, they consider surface embroidery as a major kind in which patterns are crafted on top of the fabric with the use of certain artistic threads and stitches.  The cross-stitch can also be considered as a concrete example of this.

Finally, there is the canvas work in which threads are stitched through the foundation fabric.  This is done for one particular purpose – to develop an opaque pattern that can ultimately wrap the fabric up.  The stitches made for this kind depend largely on what the stitcher wants.

Today, designing and decorating fabrics can be done a bit labor-free with the use of the so-called machine embroidery.  This simply involves the use of a specialized machine that can create stitched designs automatically.