Begin an exhilarating journey into the world of drawing and painting with thread and your sewing machine. Thread sketching is a fascinating craft - but where do you begin? This fully revised and illustrated Second Edition of 'Creative Thread Sketching' guides you through everything you need to know. From equipment and tools, fabric selection and setting up your sewing machine, to free motion stitching techniques and problem-solving, this friendly guide shows you how to put all the pieces together. Learn how to create a wide variety of stunning stitched textile art for your home or friends. Popular textile artist, author and blogger Deborah Wirsu includes six free, illustrated projects to help get you started with this comprehensive introduction to creating stunning textile art using fabric, thread, and a domestic sewing machine.

Go into the studio of popular textile designer Poppy Treffry, as she demonstrates how to create quirky, fun and memorable projects and motifs. Layering, fraying and applique all add to the free and easy effect, while techniques such as freestyle shading and texturing create pictures with charm and attitude. The variety of projects include home accents such as curtains and cushions, plus personal accessories like handbags and purses. Step-by-step instructions, illustrations and photographs combine with a fresh design to offer you a new twist in needlecrafting. Go freestyle with machine embroidery for uniquely creative motifs, patterns and projects.

This title provides everything sewing machine users need to know, from the types and formats of embroidery design available, how to get them off the internet and into their machine, how to stabilise fabric, which threads and needles to use, and how to use these designs creatively for beautiful results.

Renowned textile artist Meredith Woolnough creates replicas of nature using a delicate system of tiny stitches. Her artwork is breathtaking, and now for the first time Woolnough offers crafters and fiberartists a lesson in how to use the "organic embroidery" technique. Look behind the scenes of her art process, from the initialfieldwork sketching and research that inspires her designs, to theproduction of her ethereal embroidered sculptures. She guides you through 12 creativity-prompting activities to help you begin your own mastery of this method. As you learn to find your desired shape or pattern in nature, from sources like leaves, shells, or coral, then use your sewing machine to turn bits into exquisite art. You'll also enjoy dozens of inspirational photos of Woolnough's ownart pieces. Woolnough's instructions offer simple but highlyversatile techniques, and allow you space for your own creative approach

Experiment and discover your own artistic voice and style! Providing a wealth of inspiration for those new to textile art as well as experienced textile artists, Free Motion Embroidery guides you through the entire creative process – from finding inspiration to designing your own stitched artworks. This revised and updated standalone title is drawn from Katie Essam's successful Layered and Stitched Pictures in The Textile Artist series. Incorporating a new bonus project, this book showcases Katie's free machine embroidery techniques. Her fresh, modern style uses unique combinations of traditional techniques, and in this book she shows how to create beautiful textile art inspired by the beauty in everyday objects. With eight projects and lots of inspirational finished artworks to provide inspiration, this book teaches the reader how to draw inspiration from the animals, birds, gardens, beach huts and scenes that surround us all; and use that inspiration as fuel to create gorgeous stitched pictures.

This book starts with the basics of free-machine embroidery and leads on to advanced techniques. Heavily illustrated with colour photographs, it includes many of the author's own ideas to make embroidered pictures stand out sculpturally. Building up techniques with textures and applique are explored, together with the use of thick threads, both wrapped and applied, stumpwork and fabric sculpting. The use of painted backgrounds and layers of semi-transparent fabrics add to depth and mood. This book can be a stepping stone to the development of readers' own ideas in this growing art, which is not tied to traditional ways. Two very helpful charts allow you to tell at a glance how the basic stitches are achieved, and how they can be used creatively.

Free-motion embroidery turns fabric into fabulous! 2006 Winner of Craftrends Award of Excellence!

Presents step-by-step directions for thirty projects, including a shirt pocket monogram, an embroidered checkbook cover, and a fancy blouse yoke

I do not know how long ago embroidery started but I think through the centuries, women have turned to needlecraft and embroidery for pleasure. My Grandmother told us that in her days the young ladies did not work and was taught to do needlework and embroidery. Although times have changed and the love for embroidery still remains strong, women sadly neglects this art as they do not have time. The sewing machine is a quicker medium for embroidery and decorative stitching. You can make a room look homely, cosy and beautiful with needlework and embroidery, it can be embroidered table cloths, runners, cushions, table mats, wall hangings, pictures, bed linen and many more. All these things can become possible to you by taking each page step by step and practice the various stitches and methods. To those who are already experienced machinists, sewing machine embroidery will be much easier. Others may find it a little more difficult, but it can be overcome with a lot of practice and perseverance. This type of machine embroidery needs a lot of practice, but, once having acquired control of the machine and embroidery hoop, there is no end to the possibilities of the work that can be done. I hope that the sewing machine no longer will be regarded as the machine for sewing hems, mending, curtains and dressmaking, but be the means for enjoyment in producing beautiful, machine embroidery for the home and family.