Practical sewing and stitching techniques (Mending holes and altering lengths)
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Kazakhstan

seen from United States
seen from China

seen from Türkiye
seen from Switzerland

seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
Practical sewing and stitching techniques (Mending holes and altering lengths)
I bought a sashiko kit at the fiber arts festival and just completed it! Top is the "front", bottom two images are the back before and after washing off the preprinted pattern/instructions.
Sashiko is beautiful as an art form and very useful as a method of mending clothing but what really fascinated me is the stitching technique you use on work like this, where both pieces of fabric are thin and flexible.
Rather than stitching up-and-down like in most western embroidery, with sashiko you stitch "through" horizontally. You hold a long needle with the thumb and middle finger of your dominant hand, close to the tip, with the eye braced against a special ring thimble worn at the base of your middle finger. Using your other hand, you push the fabric up and down against the tip to load several "stitches" on the needle at once, then push the needle through and pull the stitches flat, then repeat. It's very satisfying and I'm sure once I get better at it, it'll go much faster. (But first I have some cross-stitch commissions to complete.)
👎🏻
The RED corduroy trousers... FINISHED
they are finally complete, my index finger has grown a callous from hand sewing so solid that if I where to poke someone they would think I threw a rock at them, I fear it will never return to normal, I may start to consider a thimble. I HATE thimble's. I don't understand them, I fear them.
anyway, again the process of taking photos was a nightmare, I had the genius idea of just filming myself posing in the trousers and them trying to grab freeze frames of the video, HOWEVER it terns out if you are constantly moving the freeze-frames will in fact show that movement... so please be gentle withe the photo quality lol.
also I ended up hand sewing a red cotton lining into the pants to protect the embroidery backing.
if you have any questions about the project, or advice/recourses on how to do things like this feel free to comment or message, I'm always happy to talk embroidery and up cycling fashion.
parchment stitching
pages from a cistercian breviary, produced in the cistercian nunnery lichtenthal abbey, c. 1450-1500
source: Karlsruhe, BLB, Cod. Lichtenthal 29
Over the last two days I stitched a little sampler of various lines, but for fun I made it look like grass instead of a more traditional sampler. I really like the end result, it feels very painterly for some reason. I used 10 different colours, some variegated, some solid, a few different weights and materials (cotton, silk, wool). The stitches, from left to right at the bottom of the piece:
1. Backstitch
2. Double laced running stitch
3. French knots
4. Stem stitch
5. Running stitch
6. Alternating stem stitch
7. Couching
8. Hungarian heavy chain stitch (not sure if this is the actual English name, I found it in my Dutch stitch bible, which states that it is a Hungarian variation on the heavy chain stitch)
9. Heavy chain stitch
10. Laced back stitch
11. Chain stitch
12. Triple back stitch (once again, translated from my stitch bible, no idea about the actual English name)
13. Whipped back stitch
14. Satin stitch (without an underlying outline/padding)
15. Coral stitch
16. 'Open backstitch' I don't know if this stitch has an official name, probably, but it is just a backstitch where there is a small gap between the stitches. It has a more pronounced texture than running stitch, and doesn't make the fabric wavy as easily as a running stitch.
17. Bullion knots
18. Split stitch
19. Laced running stitch
20. Double laced backstitch