Needle'nThread

Good morning and welcome to the first official installment of How to Embroider a Dragonfly, wherein we will talk about the design, materials I used on the sample, possible substitutions, and setting up the design for embroidering. This project belongs to the How to Embroider (Blank) tutorial series, which you will find here . Before we launch into... the dragonflies, a little announcement: The Mini Sampler Stockings ornament kits are at long last ready to ship! The supply lines being rather slow these days, it is not likely I will be able to restock these before Christmas. If you want one, please get them while you can! This year, weve enjoyed a few different series of embroidery tutorials covering a range of stylized botanical subjects, including wheat, strawberries, daisies, and grapes. You can find all these tutorials listed here, in the How to Embroider (Blank) index . The last series of tutorials for this year is going to focus on something not-so-botanical, but garden-related nonetheless: the dragonfly. Reaching back into the dark recesses of my memory, Im pretty sure the reason for exploring this particular wing©d creature was related more to the materials rather than the subject. Dont get me wrong I love dragonflies. Theyre such curiously different bugs. But really, it was more about the materials when I thought of this particular project. Over the years here on Needle n Thread, Ive written a bit about the Loreto Embroideries that are held by the Royal School of Needlework in the UK. They are fascinating embroidered panels depicting 12 titles of the Virgin Mary from the Litany of Loreto. These 12 embroidered panels depicting illustrations of titles of the Virgin Mary in the Litany of Loreto are exquisite works of art in their own right. However, Ezio Anichini, the Italian illustrator behind them, was a prolific artist. If youve not heard of Anichini and the Loreto Embroideries, take a look at this article , which includes a downloadable PDF of John Schaffers scholarly article on Anichini. Now the big ...Read More