manipulating the needle and thread

In response to yesterday’s question about bullion stitches and how other people hold their needle and thread, Mary Corbet of NeedleNThread, included this as part of her response:

It’s funny – when I first learned how to do bullions (and almost any embroidery stitch, for that matter), I always went by the book. But once I was familiar with the mechanics of the stitch, I found out that there are easier, quicker, more convenient ways to work a stitch, depending on different embroidery situations!

Its those little tricks of manipulating the needle that you don’t generally get taught in books that I want to show people how to do in my left-handed book.

So often in Mary Thomas’s book (and others, but that’s the one that immediately springs to mind) you see a looped thread with the needle inserted in it and in the fabric in various ways. Of course you could just lay the thread on the fabric like that and then insert the needle, but that’s never going to be the quickest way. So I always sit there with my needle and try all sorts of manipulations to come up with the same as is shown in the picture, but is much less awkward and clunky. I spent ages doing that just yesterday with braid edging stitch. I got there, eventually…

My next task is Armenian edging stitch. There just has to be an easier way…

Its one of the reasons I love watching older, much more experienced embroiderers, particularly of old ethnic embroideries. They do little tricks with their needles that were taught to them by other older, more experienced embroiderers. And you know that for an old, old embroidery, the women who have passed it down will have passed down the quickest, and easiest method that has the most economical use of thread as possible. They just weren’t into wasting time, effort or precious thread!