Cotton Embroidery Fabric Online
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Fabrics used for embroidered
cotton fabric are available in different thread counts and in
cotton, linen, and blends. Your selection of fabric will depend on what you are
planning to make and the embroidery technique you are using. Here's a
basic run-down of the most common embroidery fabrics you will find in stores,
as well as unconventional sources available in-home stores.
Tightly woven even-weave fabrics are best for surface embroidery, while
loosely woven fabrics are ideal for counted thread, pulled thread, and drawn
thread techniques.
The fiber content for even weave
fabric can be cotton, linen, rayon and polyester blends—or even hemp or bamboo.
Even weave fabrics are available
in a wide range of colors, and the thread counts range from a fine, 32-count
linen to a more rustic 18-count.
Aida cloth is popular
with cross stitchers due to its easy-to-count square pattern, but it can also
be used for counted thread, Assisi embroidery or surface embroidery techniques.
This cloth is woven with grouped
fibers forming easy-to-follow squares in the fabric. With cross stitch, one
stitch is worked over each square. Aida is available in a wide range of solid
colors, as well as background printed, patterned, or textured varieties.
Fiber content can be cotton,
linen, or rayon and it ranges in size from 11-count to 22-count (the count
being the number of squares per inch of fabric).
Herat cloth, a fabric with a
large-scale count of 6 squares per inch, is technically an Aida and is perfect
for beginning stitchers because it is very easy to count.
Hardanger fabric is a 100 percent cotton 22-count even weave fabric. It
originated in Norway and is woven with a double thread. Each double-thread
group is counted as one.
Hardanger can be used for
hardanger embroidery, blackwork, cutwork, and counted thread techniques. When
using hardanger fabric for cross stitch, it is worked over 2 thread groups,
resulting in a count of 11 squares per inch.
It is available cotton
embroidery fabric online
in a limited selection of colors.
Oslo fabric is similar to
hardanger fabric and can be used in the same manner.
If I get a needle and some thread, I can embroider on anything – even paper.
But to have choices is always good. To know those choices and being able to
discern which is the best for a particular project – even better. Though it is
possible to embroider on any fabric, some are better than some others.
Even weave fabrics refer
to woven fabrics (cotton or synthetic- can be rayon, polyester,
cotton, silk, wool, acrylic, linen or mixtures of these and other
fibers) with same number of threads per inch in both directions, so
that they are woven in a regular square grid; This is important in embroidery
for accurate count sizes
These fabrics have threads with
the same thickness as well – so they are soft, smooth and has a refined surface
with higher thread count. Even weave fabric is any cotton, blended
cotton/synthetic, or synthetic fabric woven so there is a hole for stitching
between each single thread.
The best thing about aida is that you can see where your needle goes exactly,
because the cloth is woven with threads with small spaces between them.
This fabric is also known by the
name Java cloth. You can count the stitches easily and know where to put your
needle exactly.
There are many types of Aida
cloth available in the market – 8 counts to 20 count and in as many colors as you
want. Higher the count smaller the work. Most Aida is available in
stitch counts of 11 counts to 22 counts. Most popularly used fabric for
hand embroidery is a 14 count aida cloth.
Some specialty stitches or
cutwork embroidery work/ counted thread stitches like Hardanger, pulled thread
work, cutwork etc. cannot be done on Aida. Another problem with Aida is that
when doing cross stitch, the fractional stitches are difficult to do – the
needle has to go through the bunch of threads and it doesn’t end up looking
good enough. Other than this, it is the preferred cloth for cross stitch.
Cotton Muslin is a plain weave fabric. Muslin is the most commonly used
cotton fabric for most embroidery – You get muslin fabric starting with a
thread count of 70 going up to 250. As you would have guessed – 250 thread
count gives you a very fine muslin fabric which is tightly woven with a smooth
surface and which does not damage even when tightly stretched on any embroidery
frame. It can even be used without any backing for any fine embroidery like
needle painting.
The disadvantage of using cotton
is in doing counted thread embroidery – you cannot see clearly where you should
put the needle in unlike even weave fabric so it is more suited for free style
embroidery than counted stitch work. Know more about the
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