Learning Hand Stitching and Decorative Embroidery Stitches

When I was younger my sisters, mom and I would visit our local craft store circuit for project ideas and freebie instruction guides. These free guides were a great marketing tool to get crafters hooked on whatever craft items they were promoting, along with the resulting sales on all the necessary supplies, tools and accessories.

Learning Embroidery Stitches

In many of my articles I have suggested using embroidery stitches, to mend children's clothing, for crazy quilts, and pillow designing, assuming most sewers already know how to embroider. If you do not know about fun embroidery stitches, sewn with satin-embroidery floss and larger needles, see this "free embroidery book" download which is a how-to book of embroidery stitches, courtesy of Anchor Needlework online .

This will show you what the individual stitches look like, by name, and how to stitch them. Embroidery will open up a whole new world of hand stitching, from monogramming pillowcases and hand towels, to crazy-quilting and decorative clothes-mending projects.

Basic Hand Stitching

If you are not familiar with basic hand stitching here is some help. You will need to know how to sew at some point in your soft-craft projects, so you might as well take the time to learn now, if you do not already know how.

KidsSewingProjects.com has videos explaining the purpose of each different hand stitch with links for stitching demonstrations, in "Basic Hand Stitches". Alternative-windows.com offers a nice lesson plan, with hand-stitching instructions and illustrations, in their feature "Soft Furnishings Made Sew Simple".

Mending & Embroidering

Mending clothes can be easy on a sewing machine, but if you do not have one, hand stitching is the only alternative. Following the instructions given above, mend rips and tears in your family's clothing, and whenever possible add embroidery over the mended areas.

Embroidery can hide the hand-stitches and add colorful stitch-work designs to clothing, especially children's clothes. Whether you choose to embroider around seams or hems, or to disguise mended areas you can now proceed with confidence.