Embroidering by Carolyn Kayta Barrows
Embroidering by Ari
Print It by Margo
Where to get Pictures

Embroidering by Carolyn Kayta Barrows:

Get a book. I recommend the Reader's Digest Book of Needlework as the clearest and most detailed one in print. But there are hundreds of books like it out there, and the older books are just as good as the newer ones for doing basic stitches (and they're cheaper to buy second-hand).

If you're new, do a practice piece first. Your first piece is likely to be ugly (mine was) and your second one more likely to be something you'll want to keep. I've been embroidering for many decades, and this intimidated one of my daughters when she wanted to learn to embroider. So I showed her my very first piece of embroidery, lovingly saved by a grandmother for all these years. It was really awful, with no two stitches the same length, and the lines of the drawing underneath plainly visible in many places. The daughter felt better then, and now does some stitches better than I do them. She's 16.

Patches should be embroidered on a fabric that's soft but not to gauzy or too thick. Broadcloth, cotton or a blend, should do fine. Don't put your stitches too close together or the work will look lumpy. Don't put your stitches too far apart or the work will look threadbare and skimpy. Experience, you own or that of someone at a craft store who really knows what they're doing, will tell you the right combination of fabric, size of needle, and number of strands of floss.

Use embroidery floss, available at most craft or fabric stores. DMC is my favorite, but Anchor and Coats & Clark are two other reputable manufacturers. Cheap brands are likely to bleed in the wash. DMC floss comes in literally hundreds of colors, and costs me about $.29 per hank when it's not on sale. On sale they might be 4 or 5 for a dollar.

I take full advantage of the folks at my favorite stitchery store. They always hire knowledgeable folks there, most of whom know tons more than I do (and I've been embroidering for decades). I go there when I run into a technical or design problem, and somebody there always knows what to do. Then, since I have taken their time for free, I figure it's fair that I should spend some money toward keeping them in business, so I always buy something there after asking for help. And they have EVERYTHING at this place - all the colors and types of thread, from several different companies (each company makes slightly different colors), and more embroidery tools and gadgets than I could ever use, not to mention really cool books.

But I buy the rest of my preferred brand of embroidery floss at WalMart or Hancock Fabrics (most craft stores don't have all the colors), where it costs about half of what the embroidery store charges. Most of the folks at a place like WalMart have never embroidered or sewn and don't know diddley about what I'm trying to do (and don't seem to care anyway).

Embroidery floss comes with six strands all together, so you can use only as many as you need. My current project is using three strands together, because four made the stitches too thick and two made them too thin. You separate the strands by grabbing as many strands as you want, in one hand, and the rest in the other, and pulling these apart, slowly so you don't get the whole thing snarled. Too many strands of floss can also make the work look lumpy, and too few can make it look skimpy.

Floss is not twisted as tightly as sewing thread, so it works much better than trying to use sewing thread. And yes, you can combine different colors of floss in a single needle, for a tweedy effect.

Needles for embroidery can be almost anything. If you're doing things like satin stitch, use a sharp needle, with an eye big enough to accept all the strands of floss you're using. Balance the size of the eye with the diameter of the needle, such that you can use all the strands of floss you want but you don't make big holes in the fabric. Before you buy the needles, ask if what you have has a sharp or a dull point.

There are reasons not to embroider right onto your garment. The most important is that if you mess up the embroidery there, you have messed up the entire garment piece. Much better to try a patch, mess that up and throw it away, and start over again. Another reason is that if you have only done a patch, you can take it off and sew it on someplace else later, like if you get too tall for a cloak or wear out a sweater. The third reason is that it's very difficult for a hand embroiderer to do detailed work on something knit like a t-shirt or sweater. Machines are best for that.

Embroidering by Ari:

If you want to learn to do embroidery I suggest you check this website just so you can see what you're getting into. :) It has little videos that you can watch for how to do various different stitches.

This is also good for discussions on stitches, there's also other discussions on materials etc scattered through the pages.

After that, get some books and some material. Any material can be embroidered but material that is a medium weight even weave is good to learn on. Even weave fabrics will act as a guide when you need to do stitches that are all of the same length.

The people at stitchery stores can be very helpful - I know I got lots of help from people at the cross stitch store I visited before taking up the hobby. Identify the stiches you'll need for the patch, then PRACTICE them. For your choice of fabric for the real patch, check out how other patches are made, then pick your material and interfacing accordingly. Then give the whole thing a go for real. If it doesn't turn out 'perfect' the first time, keep trying. :)

And as someone else has said already, do the patch on a separate piece of material NOT directly on your cloak. If something happens to your cloak and you have to toss it, you don't lose your patch too and all the hard work you've put into it!!

I've seen a Darth Vader get his cloak caught in an escalator at a convention .... not a pretty sight when they finally got it loose.

Print it by Margo:

Get a picture of the Slytherin (webmaster: or whatever house) Crest. Since my costume isn't close to accurate, just about any will do.

We have some Printer Ready Fabric. So I'll print it out, and then cut it off the sheet. Tack it with a satin stitch to the robe and voila. It's not perfectly perfect...but it'll do until I can get some REAL robes.

Where to get pictures:

Do a Google Image search.