Embroidery for Beginners – Essential Tips

The best tips to start embroidering

Here you will find some of the best embroidery tips and tricks for beginners, some very simple and easy to do, to improve your embroidery. These lessons are mainly for beginners in the art of embroidery, but can be very useful for more advanced users as well.

The most common mistakes that happen to those who embroider:

- Using the wrong fabric
- Poor quality frame.
- Very tight stitches
- Using the wrong markers
- Embroider irregular stitches
- Finish work quickly or impatiently.
- Cut the mistakes made at work with scissors.
- Skip the basics

This is what you need to start embroidering (video of "Oh Mommy!"):

Using the wrong fabric to embroider

In order not to use the wrong fabric, it is necessary to know how to choose the most suitable fabric. Plain weave fabrics like linen, canvas, and denim are ideal for embroidery. Unevenly textured fabrics make your stitches uneven and give your work a poor image. Linen, for example, is a very irregular and loose fabric. Linen fabric embroidery stitches are irregular and uneven, so it is not a suitable fabric for embroidery.

low quality frame

To present high-quality professional embroidery work, you must choose a good-quality hoop.
Remember that not all racks are of the same quality! When purchasing your frame, make sure that the inner and outer rings match up perfectly. Otherwise, they will gather the fabric unevenly. If the fabric slips, your stitches will not be even. If you are in a good financial situation, we recommend that you purchase a premium ring.

Too tight stitches in embroidery

Your success depends on the fabric, hoop, and stitches you use. Stitches that are too tight cause the fabric to wrinkle. Try to make the stitches even and tight, but not too tight. If you are using very thin fabric, you should also use embroidery stabilizer on the back of the garment you are embroidering.
Even if you are embroidering clothes, it is recommended to use a hoop. Try it with a ring and try it without a ring and see the difference

Using the wrong markers in embroidery for beginners

Before you begin to embroider, apply a pattern to the fabric, preferably with a water-soluble marker to trace your design. Do not use fine point pens as the ink will not come out.
It is essential to have a solid design on the fabric before you begin to embroider. You can improvise and embroider freehand, but it's never as good as having a plan.

Embroider irregular stitches

If the embroidery stitches seem uneven, pay close attention to the stitch length and reduce the stitch speed to embroider all stitches at the same length.
When this happens, what often happens is the following: either you want to embroider faster because you are tired and want to finish the project quickly, or you are impatient. Rest, relax, take a breath and come back later to resume the project and you will see that everything will be better.

Get the job done quickly or without patience

Learning a new art is difficult as things don't happen as fast as we would like, so it is important to take a deep breath and take short breaks to rest and consolidate your knowledge.

Eliminate mistakes made in the work with scissors

In order not to spoil the work, it is preferable to use a seam ripper instead of scissors. With scissors, you can accidentally poke holes in your embroidery project. With the seam ripper, this is less likely to happen.

Skip the Basics of Embroidery for Beginners

To start developing your embroidery projects, nothing better than buying a good embroidery book or an encyclopedia of different stitches and techniques. Sometimes this solution is more beneficial than searching for isolated places on the Internet.

I hope all these tips have been helpful to you. Good job!