No prior embroidery experience? No problem! Standard embroidery is the basic starting point for any embroidery collection we create. There are many types of embroidery stitches that you will come across as you get more practice and become familiar with the other techniques. You will see standard quilt block stippling around your embroidery design, satin stitches, fill stitches, and bean stitches, each helping to illustrate the design. All of these stitch styles will give your projects a variety of looks and depth. To practice this technique, as well as some of the others in our Fundamentals, we will walk you through the process of the technique as featured on a basic quilt block. All of our quilt blocks get created using the same starting process, so you’ll get some added practice with quilt blocks in-the-hoop as well!
Standard Embroidery Basics
Standard embroidery defines any technique that doesn’t use any special effects like appliqué, folded fabric, or in-the-hoop techniques. Standard embroidery can be as simple as a monogram or as complex as a realistic animal, but regardless it boils down to 3 basics: Stabilizer, Base Fabric, and Machine Steps.
1. Stabilizer: A stabilizer is vital to provide support for the embroidery and keeps the stitches sturdy and crisp. Here at Anita, we mainly use either No-Show Mesh, Tear-Away, or Wash-Away stabilizers.
2. Base Fabric: You can run standard embroidery on most fabrics—cotton, linen, twill, felt, and denim are ideal options for the best results. For projects such as quilts, you can use the base fabric's placement stitch to measure and align your fabric to save on materials and money!
3. Machine Steps: All Anita Goodesign collections include written machine steps in the tutorial for you to follow along with and to give a description of what each step will be running. Standard embroidery steps are indicated by the thread color used in the sample's design. Just follow each step and the thread color changes until your design is finished—it's that easy!
Standard Embroidery Styles
We've crafted a handy way to create hand stitched style standard embroidery and replicate the labor-intensive look of by-hand embroidery! By digitizing designs to repeat the thread ply for you, the layered threads mimic the vintage and antique look, like in our Hand Stitched Countryside collection (Right).
You'll often see many different types of traditional hand embroidery stitches, like: running, chain, French knots, fishbone, and so many more. Since hand embroidery tends to be lighter in stitch count and density, these designs are easy to run and can look fabulous on anything!
You'll notice in a lot of our standard appliqué collections, we'll include standard embroidery over the appliqué. Combining these two techniques is how we're able to add in extra details while still showcasing the fabrics. For instance, in our Appliqué Flower Vase collection (Left), you can see how we've digitized standard embroidery on the petals and flower centers. So, regardless of what fabric you use for the petals, you're able to add in an accent, highlight, or lowlight to give the petals depth and detailing.
Check out the video below explaining our
Standard Embroidery in Quilt Blocks step-by-step!
Looking for a standard embroidery project?
Check out some of these standard embroidery technique collections below!
