Embroidery Designs Guide

We start a different series today… A series of famous embroiderers who have needled their way into the embroidery news of the world. They could be tutors on embroidery, writers of embroidery books, experts in embroidery digitizing software or plain and simple embroidery enthusiasts.

We start with Kathleen Bentley Tackett of Blaze Branch, Dorton who has developed an expertise in applique patterns. It is said that her applique finishes are so good, that the stitches seem to disappear like magic.  This is primarily due to the finesse skills garnered through her many years of practise.   As a child, her main motivation to take up sewing was her grandmother and in her own words: “I would stand at her sewing machine and watch her making pretty dresses for her daughters”. As a young woman, she worked towards getting a tailoring certificate and made the uniforms for the Virgie High School Band. She loved making complicated stuff. Four years ago she took up quilting with the help of her daughter’s quilting machine. They trade their talents with Kathleen doing the applique by hand and her daughter doing the quilting.

Kathleen has given a few remarkable appliques away to her loved ones : one to her granddaughter in California — “Basket of Roses”; one to her grandson — “Mexican Star”; and one to her grandddaughter in college — “Lavendar Tea.”

She is currently working on a “Through the Year with Sunbonnet Sue” quilt. It has 12 appliqued squares, one for each month. The patterns are made up of pieces of material in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors. July’s square is patriotic; February’s is Valentine’s Day; September’s shows Sunbonnet Sue on her way to school … and so on.

With over 20 quilts finished and two more started, Kathleen is always flooded with new ideas and new patterns. Besides those mentioned, she has made: “Devil on the Run,” “Flower Garden” (hand quilted by Pike County Quilt Guild member Zetta Mullins), “Cabin in the Woods,” “Chain of Jewels,” “Garnet Glaze,” “Courthouse Steps,” “Maggie’s Flower Garden,” “Christmas,” “Mystery Quilt,” “Storm at Sea,” “China Blue,” “Grandmother’s Flower Garden,” “Robert’s Flower Garden,” “Folk Art Freedom,” “Cathedral Window” and “Autumn.”

Kathleen belongs to the Pike County Quilt Guild that meets at the Pike County Extension Office and has also won a prize in the guild’s Hillbilly Quilt Show, in the Miscellaneous category.

Lets wish her the very best in her embroidering career ahead!

Brother International Corporation is one of the premier providers of products for the home, home office and office. Their U.S.A. corporate office located in New Jersey, was established on April 21, 1954 and markets many industrial products, home appliances, and business products manufactured by its parent company, Brother Industries, Ltd., of Nagoya, Japan. These products include an award-winning line of Multi-Function Center and printers.  They recently introduced C-Combo, a perfect lightweight compact embroidery machine.   The C-Combo line includes the Innov-is 900D and SE350. 

Some of the key highlights of the Innov-is 900D and SE350 include a backlit LCD Touch Screen, one-touch access to built-in designs including embroidery editing capabilities,  automatic Push-Button Thread Cutter, ease in cutting thread,  sixteen Built-in Languages,  precise translation of step-by-step instructions on the LCD panel,  memory Functions, embroidery Editing,  seventy Built-in Embroidery Designs and sixty-seven Built-in Stitch Functions including 10 styles of one-step, automatic buttonholes, built-in Card Slot,  popular 4″ x 4″ embroidery field and a quick-Set(TM) bobbin and Advanced Needle Threader.

The higher-featured Innov-is 900D includes the above features plus thirty-five built-in embroidery Designs based on Disney/Pixar characters,  computer connectivity for transfer of .pes files from a computer to the machine, my Custom Stitch(TM) feature, 3 sewing fonts,  62 additional decorative stitches, embroidery menu access for accessing the embroidery menu while in sewing mode to save time and plan future designs, the ability to read all embroidery cards featuring Disney/Pixar characters, protective Hard Cover and Accessory Box that fits under the free arm and a Sew Nice Pic(TM) frame.

Good things come in small packages…. every day!! Check out a free embroidery design every day at All Free Embroidery Designs.

Most of the designs are in pes embroidery format. The website also allows users to create their own account, log in and submit their free designs along with a link back.

I hail from the East of the World - India. I have been studying various hand embroidery designing techniques and I found it interesting to note how culture, history, background so strongly influences the very essence of these patterns.

The Western techniques are also influenced by the above parameters and techiques like cutwork, flipflop, corvette, mardi gras embroidery designs emerge out to the world!

In the Eastern, apart from India a treasure of traditional embroidery comes in from China.  China is the first country in the world that discovered the use of silk for hand silk embroidery.    Silkworms were domesticated as early as 5000 years ago.  The production of silk thread and fabrics gave rise to this beautiful art of embroidery. According to the classical Shangshu, the “regulations on costumes” of 4000 years ago stipulated among other things “dresses and skirts with designs and embroideries”.    In 1958 a piece of silk was found in a tomb of the state of Chu of the Warring Sates Period (475-221 B.C).  It is hand embroidered with a dragon-and-phoenix design.  More than 2000 years old, it is the earliest piece of Chinese embroidery ever unearthed.

In 2005, I wrote about Photo or Embroidery Design - Hunan Silk Embroidery. Today, silk embroidery is practised nearly all over China. The best commercial products, it is generally agreed, come from four provinces: Jiangsu (notably Suzhou), Hunan, Sichuan and Guangdong, each with its distinctive features.   Embroidered works have become highly complex and exquisite today. Take the double-face embroidered “Cat” you see next to this post, representative work of Suzhou embroidery. The artist splits the hair-thin coloured silk thread into filaments-half, quarter 1/12 or even 1/48 of its original thickness– and uses these in embroidering concealing in the process the thousands of ends and joints and making them disappear as if by magic. The finished work is a cute and mischievous-looking cat on both sides of the groundwork. The most difficult part of the job is the eyes of the cat. To give them lustre and life, silk filaments of more than 20 colours or shades have to be used.  Recently, on the basis of two-face embroidery have developed further innovations– the same design on both sides in different colours, and totally different patterns on the two faces of the same groundwork. It seems that possibilities hitherto unknown to the art are still to be explored.