Embroidery Glossary, Ancient Light Pagan, Wiccan store, Oregon Coast

Glossary of Needlework Terms

Many definitions adapted from Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches

Stitches are identified in blue
Techniques & styles in green
Terms & Materials in red
A word in bold in the text means that it exists in the alphabetical list.

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Rectangular construction - A style of cutting and building garments where the pieces are not cut in curves, but straight lines. This is the original "style" of most clothing, tailoring being comparatively late in human development. This style wastes almost no fabric and is very strong and long-wearing, but is neither form-fitting, nor necessarily comfortable.

Reversible Blackwork - Another name for Holbein work. The name "Reversible", is as opposed to Blackwork as defined as black on a color or neutral.

Running stitch - (aka Sewing stitch or Darning Stitch) This is the standard sewing stitch that everyone learns, the one that produces a dotted line.

Sampler - A piece of embroidery done for education or practice, as well as the usual decorative purpose.

Sampler stitch - (see Cross Stitch)

Satin stitch - An embroidery stitch that is simple to learn, but difficult to do well. The stitches lie side by side in tidy rows. This stitch, if done well, makes a neat firm edge, and creates beautiful shadings.

Seed stitch (freehand) - (aka Seeding stitch, Seed filling and Speckling) This freehand embroidery filling consists of tiny stitches taken randomly over all of the area needing to be filled at all angles and in any direction. The constant is the stitch length.

Seed stitch (counted) - (aka Speckling or Darned filling) This counted thread stitch consists of single unit running stitch making one row after another at regular intervals of dotted lines. On linen, shadowing, though it occurs, is not a problem because of the regular nature of the stitching.

Sequins - (aka Spangles) In modern usage these are usually cupped round pieces of plastic with a metallic finish with a center hole. These sometimes refer to any flat pieces of the same material, especially if they have holes for sewing. Before plastic and Mylar these were of metal and usually referred to round bits with a hole.

Sewing stitch - (aka Running stitch or Darning stitch) This is the standard sewing stitch that everyone learns, the one that produces a dotted line.

Shading stitch - Another name for Long and short stitch.

Shadowing - The undesirable show-through of stitches from the wrong side, that usually occurs in work on fine linens or other fine ground fabrics.

Side trips - In any Counted Thread work these are the lines of stitches that take off from the ground line.

Silk - Silk is the fiber of the cocoon spun by a particular type of caterpillar that feeds on mulberry leaves. The legend goes that a Chinese empress was drinking tea when a cocoon dropped into her cup and unwound. (see also flat silk and twisted silk)

Silk fabric - Fabric woven of silk fiber.

Slubs, Slubby and Slubbiness - A slub is the thickened part of a spun fiber created when two sections of fiber are joined. A slubby fabric is one where these are obvious. In garment fabrics these create the interesting texture that we associate with Linen but our ancestors would be appalled to see us doing Counted thread work on these fabrics. The problem comes in when a stitch first goes over a stitch unit that has normal threads and then over one with a slub. The one with a slub becomes larger than the others creating irregularity in the work.

Snail Trail - (see Coral Stitch)

Spangles - In modern usage they are synonymous with Sequins, but in earlier eras these were decorative metal bits of various shapes, rather than just round.

Spanish stitch - This is another name for Double-Running Stitch, but also is used for Plait stitch.

Speckling - The technique of using Seed stitch as a background filling stitch. Found mostly in 16th and 17th century embroidery

Split stitch - This stitch is worked similarly to outline stitch or stem stitch, except that the needle comes up THROUGH the previous one.

Star stitch or Star Eyelet stitch - (see Algerian Eye stitch)

Stem stitch - This is the same stitch as Outline stitch. Mary Thomas asserts that the Outline stitch holds the working thread to the left of the needle and Stem stitch to the right, but I have also seen this defined as the heavier-weight of the two stitches.

Stitch unit - (aka stitching unit) This is the term for the regular grouping of threads in the ground fabric of Counted Thread work.

Straight Stitch - a single stitch

Stroke stitch - (see Straight Stitch)

Stumpwork - The Victorian word for a raised work that is the ancestor of Brazilian embroidery. It is often worked with wire and such stitches as couched buttonhole, as well as appliquéd beads, jewels and wood pieces.

Tent stitch - A fine canvas work stitch that is sometimes called Petit Point. It can be worked either on the diagonal (where it distorts the canvas less) or on the horizontal. This is one of the two stitches that most people talk about when they speak of needlepoint. Most Berlin Wool work pictures were worked in this stitch, with the backgrounds in Gros point.

Tacking stitch - (see darning stitch)

Tapestry stitch - (aka knitting stitch) This looks a lot like chain stitch or knitting when done on canvas. It is worked in two journeys, one up and then one down.

Tapestry (embroidered) - Strictly speaking, tapestry is a weaving technique (see below) but large pictorial embroidered works and some needlepoints are often called tapestries as well.

Tapestry (woven) - This is a weaving technique, rather than an embroidery, but often gets covered in needlework books. Once the loom has been warped, the weft is woven in, a color block at a time, with the adjoining colors locked together with a special stitch. Often the large tapestries of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (where they were also called carpets!) were woven by 2-5 people standing in front of a vertical loom that was up to 30 feet wide! A picture (cartoon) drawn on muslin or a similar fabric was hung behind the warp so that the colors and shapes could be reproduced in the weaving.

Thread count - In fabrics this refers to how many threads are woven into an inch. It can be determined by taking a small ruler or quilter’s gauge with you when you are determining thread count. Hold the ruler up to the grain of the fabric (not in a selvedge) and count. To determine whether a fabric is an even-weave, also count the threads in the cross-grain, (not the bias).

Trip - (see Journeys)

True stitch - (see Double-running stitch)

Twisted silk - Silk filaments that have been twisted into a thread that doesn’t unravel. Sometimes this term is used when flat silk is twisted as it is being worked.

Two-sided Italian Cross stitch - (aka Italian two-sided cross stitch and Italian stitch) An historical form in which not only is the work reversible, but the ground fabric is almost completely covered. The work appears to be box stitch worked on top of cross-stitch but is worked all in one journey.

Wire - Several different types of wire are used in embroidery. In common usage most have been replaced in the last several decades by various plastics, particularly by the blending filaments and metallic floss. In historical embroideries, wire is used in several specialized forms, Opus Anglicanum being the prime example. Wire comes in many types: regular wire, flat wire, purling (coiled fine wire), faceted purling (purling that has been specially bent or hammered to give it a more sparkly appearance, and the various metal threads that are produced by hammering a fine wire flat and then coiling it around a silk core.

Wool - A fabric that may have been the earliest woven textile (the other possibility being linen) It is spun from the fleece of sheep. After the sheep are sheared, the fleece is washed, spun, carded and then woven.

Wool work - Do not confuse with Berlin Wool Work! This is all the various forms of embroideries that are done in wool as opposed to thread. This includes Jacobean and crewel work as well as needlepoint. Please note that "wool" is this context means "yarn of any type" not just the product of sheep!

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