Thinking of taking up some type of embroidery as a creative skill? Or wanting to improve your skills?
~ Hand Embroidery ~
Mega Books (stitch bibles, encyclopedias, complete guides, etc.)
Hand Embroidery Stitches At A Glance
Mary Thomas’s Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches
The Complete Book of Embroidery
The Embroidery Stitch Bible (I noticed that this one is spiral bound–seems like that would be handy!)
The Stitch Bible: A Comprehensive Guide to 225 Embroidery Stitches and Techniques
~ Specialties ~
I don’t have a lot of links here (and may never) but these should at least give you an idea of what each type of embroidery is and whether or not you want to pursue it.
Bead Embroidery
Bead Embroidery Stitch Samples
Crewel Embroidery
Beginner’s Guide to Crewel Embroidery
Drawn Thread
Beginner’s Guide to Drawn Thread Embroidery
Goldwork
A-Z of Goldwork with Silk Embroidery
Mountmellick Embroidery
Beginner’s Guide to Mountmellick Embroidery
Ribbon Embroidery
The Handbook of Silk Ribbon Embroidery
A-Z of Ribbon Embroidery: A comprehensive manual with over 40 gorgeous designs to stitch
Stumpwork
Thread Painting
Whitework
Other
~ Related Needlework ~
Crazy Quilting
See Allie Aller’s Crazy Quilting: Modern Piecing & Embellishing Techniques for Joyful Stitching for an introduction. If you look through the “customers who bought this item also bought” list you should see more crazy quilting books with nice covers that show more examples of what crazy quilting looks like.
Cross Stitch
See The Cross Stitcher’s Bible for examples.
Hardanger
See Beginner’s Guide to Hardanger to learn what is is.
Needlepoint
See A-Z of Needlepoint.
Punch Needle
Punchneedle The Complete Guide
Smocking
A-Z of Smocking: A complete manual for the beginner through to the advanced smocker. Usually used on clothing.
~ Machine Embroidery ~
Machine embroidery is done with a sewing machine with some decorative stitches, with a sewing machine/embroidery machine, or with an embroidery only machine (typically the term does not refer to using just a few decorative sewing machine stitches). What you plan to use is an important factor in what resources you use.
A Few Books on the Subject
The Complete Machine Embroidery Manual
Embroidery Machine Essentials – Basic Techniques
Embroidery Machine Essentials: How to Stabilize, Hoop and Stitch Decorative Designs
Machine Embroidery in 6 Easy Lessons Book with Tools By Eileen Roche