PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — With the holiday season fast approaching, many folks might be wondering how they can create unique presents for friends and loved ones with a more personal touch than the usual store-bought items.
That’s what folks at Northern Maine Community College learned Tuesday, Oct. 23, when Robin Thurston, an avid craftsperson and director of the Robert A. Frost Memorial Library in Limestone, stopped by the campus library for an hour long lesson on how to embroider on paper.
Thurston said that paper embroidery is a fun, creative skill that is easy to learn as long as people start off with simple patterns such as flowers, hearts or leaves. The first step is to take scissors and cut around, but not too close, to the drawing of whichever pattern they choose to embroider. Then place the pattern onto a colorful sheet of paper, which should be placed onto a scrap of cork or packing foam.
Crafters should then smooth out their chosen thread, or “floss,” with an embroidery tool known as a “bone.” This technique, Thurston said, prevents the floss from twisting when you pull it through the holes in your paper.
“If you want to make a card, you can fold your paper in half,” Thurston said. “If not, leave it as is. Then you want to take a piece of tape and put it on the back of your pattern, without touching the holes, so that it sticks to the paper.”
Each pattern marks specific spots where embroiderers must pierce holes using a tool called an “awl.” Although this can become tedious, Thurston explained, it is important that needleworkers proceed carefully so that they put each hole in the proper place for threading.
“It helps to stop and hold up your paper every few minutes so that you can make sure you’re putting the holes in the right places and aren’t driving them in too deep,” Thurston said.
When threading embroidery floss through the holes of the pattern, Thurston cautioned against using more than three strings of thread because doing so can make the pattern appear too thick. After choosing at least two threads of floss, crafters can then remove the piece of tape from the pattern and use a needle to thread the floss through each hole. Instead of knotting the end of each string of floss, Thurston advises crafters use tape to secure the beginning and end of each thread.
Once needleworkers become more skilled in their paper embroidery techniques, they can advance to harder patterns such as birds, fireworks and Christmas trees, all of which Thurston showed students on Tuesday with examples from her personal projects. For further ideas on patterns, she recommends that aspiring crafters pick up the book “A to Z of Embroidery Stitches.”
Among the seven community members who came out to learn how to embroider on paper were NMCC students Chirien Pace, a liberal arts major, and Janelle Pottle, a nursing major. Neither had ever embroidered before and said that Thurston’s class made each eager to learn more.
“I thought embroidery would be fun to learn,” Pace said, about why she took the class. “Up until now, the only sewing I’d ever done was patching up holes in clothes.”
Pottle said, “I like that it’s something new to learn. I might want to continue so that I could make cards.”
Thurston has been an avid crafter for most of her life and also enjoys quilting, knitting, scrapbooking and making handcrafted cards. She learned to embroider on paper several months ago and encourages people not to give up even if they struggle with the techniques in the beginning.
“It’s a good hobby to pick up and allows people to have fun and use their creativity,” she said.
