Saturday, August 15, 2009

Designing your own embroidery

Many embroiderers don’t want to design their own embroidery patterns, but for those who can’t find what they want, or have an idea in their head they want to embroider, it is a satisfying process.

First, know what embroidery style you are comfortable with. For beginners only just discovering surface embroidery, patterns for a stumpwork design are too adventurous. Wait until you have tried a style before designing for it.

Second, draft a few sketches on paper. Try different placements for the elements in your embroidery pattern, moving them around till they appear balanced – not evenly spread necessarily, but till it “looks right”. For example, if you have a bird on a branch to the left of centre, try a flower to the right.

And remember the basic rules of perspective – items closer to you will be larger, and lower in the picture. Items further away will be smaller, and higher in the picture.

To see the Collection Showcase of the UK Embroidery Guild go to this website:
http://tinyurl.com/lmtp6s
I am now using shortened URL's to make addresses less cumbersome, I get them shortened through tinyurl so you can be sure they are genuine.

More on embroidery design next time.

No comments:

Post a Comment