I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch remember the '80s? Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on All Rights Reserved. Remember last week, when I shared with you some photos of this Big Project โ re-creating and repairing some pieces of ecclesiastical embroidery?
Well, when I first got suckered into the adventure did I just say that?! For those who are not familiar with tambour embroidery, it is embroidery done with a tiny hook.
All those designer beaded and sequined outfits that hit the fashion runways every year? The embellishment is mostly worked with a tambour hook. The advantage of tambour beading is that, though done by hand, it is relatively fast. Skilled tambour embroiderers work with impressive speed, encrusting their various projects with all kinds of sparkle and texture in much less time than it would take to do the same with a regular needle.
While tambour bead embroidery is done from the back of the fabric, tambour embroidery without the beads is done from the front of the fabric. Tambour embroidery produces chain stitch. I already knew how to work the normal chain stitch with a tambour hook before I began this particular excursion.
But Golly Moses, it was a slow, laborious process! My two or three previous forays into trying tambour embroidery went like this: pick up the hook, try to get the line started, sit there for five or ten minutes in frustration, producing three shoddy looking chain stitches, and then move onto something else.
