Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery: Visual guide to 120 essential stitches for stunning designs

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Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery: Visual Guide to 120 Essential Stitches for Stunning Designs is my latest book. Sharon heads an initiative every year called TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday) in which she presents a stitch every Tuesday, highlighting variations, and encourages the participants to explore the stitch thoroughly, experimenting with combinations, variations, threads, colors, embellishments – all the aspects that can bring a different look and life to the stitch. We then move into tools and materials. Unlike more “formal” types of embroidery, the tools and materials here are very simple: fabric, needles, a hoop, some transfer pens or pencils… and lots and lots and lots and lots of thread in different colors, types, and weights. Kazuhito’s heartfelt reverence for nature manifests in the care he takes when nurturing and gathering his natural materials – a process that takes many months. It’s also helped him to cultivate an instinctive knowledge of when and how to harvest and use them to create elegant, sculptural artworks.

In this part of the book, Sharon talks about “finding the play points” in the process of stitching – those moments when “a creative decision turns a mundane stitch into a lively and interesting surface.” Both of these straightforward stitch dictionaries feature clear step-by-step instructions, photographs and diagrams which are simple to follow. They include over 170 stitches, including a large range of surface stitches.With my strong interest in horticulture and a love of art I wanted to find a way to combine the two. I started by collecting leaves and grasses from gardens, which I used to make embroidered greeting cards. Grasses, leaves and twigs may not be everyone’s idea of textile art, but through Kazuhito Takadoi’s eyes, there is nothing better. I like the idea of an idle-minutes, informal band piece. Done for the sheer fun of it. I do most of my pieces ad-hoc – not choosing the next band or area fill until I am ready to start it, rather than laying out the entire piece ahead of time, or doing a full stitch-by-stich advance plan. Like you though, I do set out some structure guidelines. I’ll mark the center line with basting, along with the left and right edges. I might also on a big rectangle, mark a couple of other uniform division points for later use, like quarters or thirds, so that my starts and stops tend to align.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s what makes exploring a stitch fun– that moment when you digress from the ordinary and turn the stitch into something to play with. It’s here that you’ll learn how to move fearlessly from the basics of the stitch into more inventive territory. Creative Stitches in a Contemporary Embroidery is the natural outcome of Sharon’s explorations in stitch. It’s a book for embroiderers who love embroidery stitches of all kinds, from simple to elaborate, and who find fascination in the creative ways they can be employed.If you were to break the book down into basic stitches, there are probably about thirty overall that could be considered different stitches from each other. These stitches are explored in depth, with all kinds of variations so that you have a good idea about what you can do with the stitch and where else you can take it. Using the latest DTG printing technology and eco-friendly inks, we’re able to reproduce digital images that maintain their vibrancy and look amazing on both white- and dark-colored garments