Yesterday I had an email conversation with a friend who is left-handed. She has a copy of my book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion (and loves it), but she’s about to do some highly technical historical style stitching for which there are no stitch diagrams and instructions in left-handed available.
She asked me if mirroring will work. Mirroring is the technique that is nearly always suggested by right-handers who sometimes have little idea what stitching is like for left-handers.
Sure, mirroring can work, but it doesn’t always work. If you always mirror, sometimes you will get the completely wrong result because of the thread twist.
So, if you don’t or can’t mirror, what can you do? You can also try turning the work either 90 or 180 degrees. Whether you use 90 or 180 degrees is a matter of experimentation, to find out what works comfortably.
The reply then came back from my friend “Is there a difference between 180 and mirroring?”
YES!!! (sorry about the triple exclamation marks, Rachel.)
Turning 180 degrees means that the thread twist is not affected. Mirroring means that it is. The best example of that is stem stitch versus outline stitch. Compared to each other, outline and stem are mirrored. But turn each of them around 180 degrees and they still each look the same as they did before. So in this case, turning does not affect the stitching outcome, but mirroring does.
So there is a difference between turning and mirroring, and you can’t just always mirror!
If you’re left-handed, the easiest thing to do is buy a copy of my book The Left-Handed Embroiderer’s Companion, as you’ll find that with about 170 different stitches in there, I’ve already done the thinking for you. 🙂
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
I find myself delighted to be right handed. So much less to worry about!