Embroidery Definition List

Techniques: How the Needle Decorates

Embroidery techniques divide by how thread meets ground cloth. Surface embroidery stitches on top of the fabric, following a drawn design — the freest method, home of stem stitch, satin stitch and French knots. Counted thread work instead treats the woven grid of even-weave linen or canvas as graph paper, so patterns repeat with mathematical regularity; cross stitch and Assisi work, with its motif left unstitched against a worked ground, both live here. Canvas work covers the ground completely with stitched pattern, the technique of needlepoint pictures and chair seats. Drawn thread work and Hardanger pull the opposite trick — threads of the ground fabric itself are cut, withdrawn or bundled, and the remaining structure is wrapped and filled, making decoration out of absence as much as thread.

Couching lays a thick or precious thread on the surface and tacks it down with small stitches — the only practical way to embroider with metal thread or cord too stiff to pass through cloth. Laidwork fills shapes with threads laid side by side and held by a trellis of crossing stitches, economical with expensive silk and gold. Applique builds the design from pieces of fabric stitched onto the ground, and smocking gathers cloth into elastic pleats, decoration that is also engineering, letting a bodice or cuff stretch without elastic.

Traditions with Names and Histories

The named traditions carry whole eras. Blackwork covers fabric in counted black silk patterns, the reversible Holbein stitch giving it finished faces on both sides — Tudor portraiture is full of it. Berlin wool work flooded Victorian parlors with bright, shaded wool patterns worked from printed charts. Crewel embroidery uses two-ply wool on linen in free, flowing designs, and its Jacobean branch filled seventeenth-century hangings with fantastical trees, birds and beasts. Whitework — white thread on white linen, including drawn and cut work — made luxury out of restraint, the decoration visible only as texture and shadow. Stumpwork raised motifs off the surface on padding and wire, embroidery becoming small sculpture.

Tapestry closes the list by stretching the definition: woven tapestry builds its image in the weaving itself, while the Bayeux Tapestry, despite its name, is embroidery — wool stitched on linen, telling the Norman Conquest in pictures. Knowing which is which is exactly the kind of fluency this list builds, and it matters practically too, from choosing stabilizers for machine embroidery to describing a vintage textile accurately for sale or study.