When I first started to embroider, I did it incorrectly for MONTHS.
I thought I would never be good at embroidery because I have bad handwriting, and that’s why things looked sloppy and weird. (I really believed that, we love internalized low self esteem).
It turned out, that I just didn’t know about separating the embroidery floss.
So many videos I had watched skipped that step, maybe mentioned to use 2 or 3 strands, but I thought that meant the type of floss or something.
So today, we are going to define lots of terms and learn how to thread and stitch our first stitch. You may know some of the terms, but if you don’t, that’s why they are there! Let’s learn:
| TERM | DEFINITION |
| Embroidery | |
| Embroidery hoop (often just called hoop) | |
| Needle | |
| strand(s) | |
| embroidery floss | Typically 6 strands wrapped around each other for easy packaging. |
We will discuss how to separate the floss and recombine it, and why that is a vital step!
If you don’t separate the floss, your floss will look twisted and be difficult to work with. So, even if you are using 6 strands for something, separate it first unless you want it looking like this:
Insert Picture Here
There are a few types of embroidery techniques that may benefit from untwisted floss, such as making a 3-D rose. But for the most part, doing that few minutes of separating is going to save you from tangles and messiness later. And you deserve your work to look good!