EMBROIDERY DESIGNS AND PATTERNS

Embroidery designs and patterns are arguably the oldest form of clothing beautification we know. Embroidery is art. So, when you think of embroidery designs and patterns, you think of colourful murals on bricks or fanciful paintings on a canvas. However, we don’t get to see locally embroidered fabrics in Nigeria nowadays.

What Is Embroidery?

Simply put, embroidery is the beautification of fabric using colourful threads or yarn to make beautiful designs and patterns. These designs and patterns are duplicated on textile using a host of stitching techniques, the most popular of which are the chain and cross stitches, especially for beginners.

Some History

If you didn’t know, embroidery art dates back to earlier in the traditional Chinese and Japanese dynasties of the Jacobean era of the 1600s and as such, is often referred to as “Jacobean embroidery”. The popular method during this era was embroidery by hand, long before technology invented the embroidery machine. Embroidery designs and patterns of this phase were flowery designs and geometric patterns.

Embroidery also played a major role in the representation of folk art in this era, as stories were depicted on textile using embroidered characters, which we have to admit is so cool!

Laos Folk Art

Contemporary Embroidery

Traditionally, embroidery by hand and the embroidery machine have three unique ways of fabric embroidery.

1. The free or surface embroidery worked to the ground fabric to form a raised motif.

2. The Needlepoint or Canvas work stitched all over the underlying fabric, completely covering it.

3. The Counted Thread-work embroidery woven over selected threads on the ground fabric. One of the most popular examples of this is the cross stitch woven on mostly cotton and linen fabrics.

In recent times, use of the embroidery machine has outgrown the skill of embroidery by hand. Considering the amount of time spent embellishing a fabric by hand, we can count this as an advantage.

Embroidery art now covers more ground than ordinary textile embellishments for clothing. We can find several embroidered designs on shoes, bags, headgears, floor carpets and you name what else. Beads and sequins are also now infused to give the kind of delicate haute couture look we can find on runways.

Check out these designs!

Now that you have these beautiful embroidery designs and patterns in hand, click here to check out different lace fabrics you can use to test your embroidery skills.

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