Beginner embroidery tools 101 part 2
Today I’m going to talk about the tools that make things a little easier if you want to do more embroidery.
Firstly, I live in a Cornish house, this generally means granite walls and very little light. It keeps the Cornish winds out but makes stitching very difficult, especially as my eyesight is getting weaker as I get older. This means a light is absolutely imperative for me. If you are lucky enough to live in a light filled house and it’s summer then you might find you don’t need one but for those tiny details it can still help a lot.
My light has is an LED light. I find this is by far the best kind of light I have tried as it is a white light so the colours tend to look correct, important when I’m using tones that are close to each other. I used to have a ring light with a magnifier in the middle but I found I didn’t use the magnifier so I replaced it with this long light that I can manoeuvre across my work and my drawing table.
The particular light that I use is a Lepro led light. This one is similar .
The next thing I have is a stand to hold my hoop. To be honest I have managed for years without a stand as I rarely need both hands to embroider but I finally bought one to help with videoing for tutorials and stitch alongs that will be coming this year. The stand I have is a simple one (although it was a little faffy to put together) from Siesta frames. It is a seat stand (you sit on the base) but I use it on my table.
Hawthorn Handmade also do a seat stand here
If you have been transferring patterns using the window method then your arms might be getting a bit tired and it might be time for a light box. I love my light box, it is an A4 daylight wafer light box but it is a little pricey at £60 so it depends on how much pattern transferring you want to do. It’s available here I think there are cheaper light boxes on Amazon but I haven’t tried them out.
In my next blog post I will go through the different transferring methods that I have tried along with their pros and cons.
The last thing in my list is thread storage. I wind my threads onto cardboard bobbins (You can also buy plastic versions of these) and write the numbers on them then store them in plastic boxes. Because I have an awful lot of threads I use the larger box that you can see in the first picture. But I also have a couple of small boxes that I keep the threads for specific projects in as I usually have more than one on the go at any time. Plastic isn’t very pretty or environmental but I have had these boxes for years and they protect the threads well. Cloudcraft have lots of thread storage options including the bobbins and boxes.
I hope you’ve found these two posts helpful and please feel free to comment if you have any tools that you can’t do without or particular recommendations for products that you have tried. Also if you are in another country any links to products there would be fabulous.
Have a lovely weekend and I hope you manage to fit in a little stitchy time.