Embroidery Supplies For Beginners

Are you wondering what embroidery supplies you need to begin the fun of sewing? Well good because that is what I am talking about today! In fact I don’t use anything but the basics myself. I don’t use anything fancy or expensive. Following is the written version of the podcast with a few changes to make sense in written form. I hope by the end you will feel confident to begin your own embroidery journey!

Tools of the Trade

Welcome to Embroidery For Kids And Me, Getting Stitchy with it podcast,  helping you and your children love embroidery bit by bit. Stick around for free tools and patterns, inspired by fairy tales and the like.

Today I will tell you about the tools I use for my embroidery projects and how I store them.

I will start with my basket. It is oval in shape which is really great to have because the oval shape makes it wide enough for medium to smaller size hoops to fit easily inside. It fits everything I need. The handle makes it a quick grab and goes from room to room, to the park, in the car, or wherever I have hope of getting some sewing done.

Of course i don’t sew while I’m the driver!

Next is my floss organizer. It’s a plastic box with compartments and a lid. You simply wind the floss around a floss bobbin and tuck the ends in one of the slits. Before I had this system, my floss was continually getting knotted and it was so frustrating! This system I use is cheap and so worth the money! Which would be less than ten dollars at such places as hobby lobby.

Next I have large fabric scissors and small fabric scissors. The large scissors are great for cutting the fabric and the small scissors are for cutting the floss when you are getting ready to thread, or when you need to cut to fix mistakes. 

Cutting fabric with paper scissors is frustrating  and adds unnecessary stress when you can buy fabric scissors at a reasonable cost. About 10-15$ or so. Keep them away from children! These unappreciative little beings you created will use them to cut paper and then they will be ruined! Can you tell I speak from experience?

Or course you can’t get very far in your project without needles! There are specific to embroidery needles out there which work great. What I look for in a needle is a large whole or eye, and pointy tip. The blunt tips work well for cross stitch but not so well for embroidery. 

I have a bunch of different sized needles. I store them in a plain rectangle shaped piece of felt. One of these days I will make it look cute but it will do for now. I have a baby so I need to be intentional on how I spend those precious free times!

Cotton is the fabric of choice for most embroiders. You can use other fabric such as linen and felt, but when you think of embroidery, the fabric that comes to mind is cotton.

I store my cotton fabric in a large fabric basket on top of my wall of bookshelves. My baby is crawling around so this is the safest spot for now.

White is the usual color but you can certainly use any color you like. If you are sewing a night scene then dark blue  could work well for projects where you are not covering the whole scene in stitches. 

For transfers I have been using a pencil because I have been too lazy to buy another special embroidery pen. We will talk more about pens and pencils in another episode.

Also In other episodes I will talk more about transfer methods with special guests.

I store whatever I am working on in the oval basket as well. I can take it from room to room, it can go outside, or in the car. I also can quickly snatch it away as my baby heads right for it, with messy intentions in his eyes!

True story. I did this just yesterday at the time of recording. Daddy was reading to everyone before bed. By everyone I mean all 6 children and myself. I was on the ground sewing my free Rumpelstiltskin pattern, which can be found at right here, when I saw my mess maker coming. I moved it to my other side. Undeterred, the monkey baby followed. I moved back and forth quite a few times and yet the baby remained determined! But since everything is in my handy dandy oval basket, I simply picked it up and put it on our craft table. When he starts walking and climbing I will need to put it on top of a book shelf i have no doubt!

Having everything in a basket kept my story adorable and cut instead of me being frustrated at my curious baby. When this can happen my days, and my family’s days are much happier!

To recap, I have an oval shaped basket. A box of organized floss that is wrapped around a floss bobbin. Large and small fabric scissors, large eyed, pointy needles attached to a simple rectangular piece of felt, cotton fabric, kept high in a basket away from my monkey baby, and a pencil.

Other things you might like:

• Free Rumpelstiltskin embroidery pattern
• Listen to fairy tales for free here or type Tales From Long Ago wherever you listen to podcasts. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a single adventure!

That’s it for today. I hope you found this useful. See you next week!