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.

Provides information on design transfer, applique, basic and advanced embroidery techniques, automatic stitches, machine accessories, special fabrics, and lettering, and includes a dozen project ideas

How to get the most out of your sewing machine's embroidery function.

Lindee Goodall, founder and former owner of Cactus Punch, the first independent company to design embroidery specifically for the home market, gives you everything you need to know to produce quality embroidery no matter how small and basic or large and fancy your machine. Foreword by Deborah Jones.

This volume, written by two experienced teachers of embroidery, shows how to gain mastery over your sewing machine and produce exactly the effect you want. Techniques include running stitch, zig zag, satin stitch, whip stitch, combined stitches and cable stitch.

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.

Filled with exciting projects, this book is a how-to guide for textile artists looking to learn all the methods and techniques they need to begin "painting with threads" using their own home sewing machine. This is destined to become a classic handbook, with chapters covering all the basics, including tools and materials; methods and techniques; using your sewing machine; experimenting with threads, fabrics, and colors; and creating your own designs and presenting your work. It will inspire enthusiastic beginners with limited textiles skills, as well as engage more experienced textile artists who wish to understand and adopt new techniques. The book is like taking a series of technique-based master classes, with step-by-step photographs to illustrate each stage of the process.

Featuring new and exciting techniques on how to dissolve, melt, and distort fabric both before and after stitching, this guide explores the evolving and innovative materials that are introduced into the textile market and instructs fiber artists how to use them creatively and effectively. Whether dissolving, melting, punching, slashing, or distorting textiles, crafters can achieve fascinating effects using the handbook's easy-to-follow steps, design tips, and diagrams. The book's organization around three themes--stitch, dissolve, and distort--allows experienced embroiderers to easily incorporate fresh ideas into their favorite stitching styles.