Embroidery Definitions — definitions of embroidery techniques, stitches and needlework terms from Apparel Search
Embroidery is an ancient variety of decorative needlework in which designs and pictures are created by stitching strands of some material on to a layer of another material. Most embroidery uses thread or wool stitched onto a woven fabric, but stitches can also be executed in wire or leather strands, and traditional non-woven grounds include leather and felt. Hand embroidery is painstaking and laborious, so garments today are often decorated with machine embroidery instead.
This article is predominantly about hand embroidery, which is embroidery done without the help of a sewing machine or similar electric tool. Machine embroidery has become a vast subject on its own. It is both used for creative work on individual pieces and for mass-produced clothing products.
Embroidery has traditionally been used to decorate clothing and household furnishings including table linens, tray cloths, towels and bedding, but you can literally embroider anything as long as it is made out of an evenly woven fabric and can be held firmly in the hand or in a special embroidery hoop or tapestry frame. The art of hand embroidery is a painstaking and laborious process, but today garments are often decorated with machine embroidery instead.
Embroidery has also been used as a form of art and for decoration, through the creation of embroidered or cross-stitch samplers, tapestries, wall-hangings and other works of textile art. Some types of patchwork also incorporate embroidery as a form of extra decoration.
Annemieke Mein is one example of a contemporary textile artist who creates embroidered work.
Some embroidery styles include:
Bargello or Florentine embroidery
Bunka Shishu
Cross-stitch (can mean the particular stitch or a style of embroidery)
Goldwork
One of the world's most famous pieces of embroidery is the Bayeux tapestry, made in the 11th century to commemorate the Battle of Hastings.
Other notable embroideries on public display:
Bradford carpet
Maidenhead Charter Hanging
Greenwich Heritage Panel
Chester Embroidery
Bunyan Embroidery
Thames Ditton Wallhanging
Toronto Historical Embroidery
Newcastle 900 Anniversary Panel
Croydon Centenary Panel
Overlord embroidery
Pebble Mill Heritage tapestry
Quaker tapestry
New Forest embroidery
The Royal School of Needlework is often involved in the design and/or execution of major embroidery works.
| The above article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/embroidery). 11/10/04 Modified by Apparel Search. |
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The styles listed on this page — Assisi, bargello, blackwork, canvas work, counted-thread, crewel, cross-stitch, drawn thread work, goldwork, Hardanger and whitework — are not rival arts but answers to different questions. Some are defined by material, as goldwork is defined by metal thread and crewel by wool. Some are defined by structure: counted-thread work follows the fabric grid, free embroidery follows a drawn design, and drawn thread work removes part of the fabric itself. Some are defined by color discipline, as blackwork and whitework are. A single famous object can sit in several categories at once — the Bayeux tapestry is free surface embroidery in crewel wool using couching and stem stitch — which is why embroidery is best understood as a toolkit of stitches applied under different rules, not as a ladder of separate crafts.
The requirement that fabric be held firmly, in the hand or in a hoop or tapestry frame, sounds like workshop detail; it is actually what makes even stitching possible. Stitches pull: every thread drawn through cloth and tightened drags the ground slightly toward the stitch, and across hundreds of stitches that pull puckers an unsupported fabric and distorts the design. Tension on a frame spreads the pull evenly, keeps counted fabrics square so charts stay true, and frees both of the stitcher's hands on large pieces. The same principle runs at industrial scale in machine embroidery, where hooping and stabilizing a garment before it goes under the needles decides whether a logo sits smooth or ripples — the handcraft's oldest lesson, carried unchanged into mass production.
Embroidery techniques travelled with trade, marriage and conquest, which is why the same stitches recur under different names across continents: couching in medieval England, Japan and Central Asia; counted work from Norway to Italy; drawn thread traditions from Denmark to Ukraine. Motifs travelled too, adapted to local fibers and dress. The list of famous works on this page — from the Bradford carpet to the Overlord embroidery — shows the constant: wherever a culture needed imagery on cloth that weaving could not supply, stitching supplied it, with whatever thread the region had.
Most embroidery stitches thread or wool onto a woven fabric, held firmly in the hand or in an embroidery hoop or tapestry frame. Stitches can be executed in wire or leather strands, non-woven traditional materials include leather and felt, and modern textile artists embroider on non-traditional materials such as plastic sheeting.
Hand embroidery is worked stitch by stitch without a sewing machine or similar electric tool; it is painstaking and laborious. Machine embroidery is used both for creative work on individual pieces and for mass-produced clothing products, and today garments are often decorated by machine instead of by hand.
Clothing and household furnishings — table linens, tray cloths, towels and bedding. Embroidery has also been used as art, in embroidered and cross-stitch samplers, tapestries, wall-hangings and other textile art, and some patchwork incorporates embroidery as extra decoration.