- A zigzag sewing machine with a drop-feed control. (In other words, you have to be able to lower the feed dogs so they don’t try to feed the fabric.) It’s nice if you can vary the width of your zigzag stitches too.
- An embroidery foot or needle with embroidery spring. An embroidery foot helps by holding the fabric down against the throat plate while nevertheless being minimal – it lets you see what you’re doing because it has very little surface area. You can alternatively get a needle that has a kind of spring built into it, and the spring holds the fabric in place. These can be nice in that they’re even more minimal than an embroidery foot, but they’re also relatively expensive and if it breaks you have to replace the whole thing instead of using an ordinary cheap needle with the special embroidery foot. If you use the needle with spring, you don’t use a while you embroider.
- An embroidery hoop. There are two primary kinds of embroidery hoops on the market. The old-fashioned kind, usually made of wood, has an outer ring and an innter ring. You loosen the outer ring, separate the rings, place the fabric over the inner ring, place the outer ring over the fabric, tighten the outer ring, and pull the fabric tight in the hoop. With the modern type hoop, you squeeze a pair of handles on the inner ring to remove it, place the fabric over the outer ring, place the inner ring (still squeezed) into place and release the handles. The more modern hoop is faster and easier. The old-fashioned hoop provides better tension on the fabric.
- Stabilizer. This helps prevent puckering and slipping while you’re embroidering. There are a variety of types out there. Some are papery and are torn away from the embroidery when you’re done. Only use that on the back side of the embroidery, as it’s almost impossible to get it all off. Others are also papery and also tear away but are dissolvable in cold water, leaving only a few easy-to-remove fibers in the embroidery. Your authors like this type of stabilizer. There is also a transparent plastic-like stabilizer which dissolves completely in water. Your authors have this but haven’t tried it yet, but hear it’s very nice. It’s expensive though.
- Fabric… of course. Make sure that your embroidery hoop fits on the piece you’re going to embroider on. If the piece is to be small, you may want to embroider before cutting the piece from the fabric.
- Thread. Contrary to popular belief, you can use ordinary polyester all-purpose thread to embroider, but it can weaken the fabric you’re embroidering on. (If you do use polyester, you may want to fuse some interfacing to the back of your embroidery when you’re done.) There is plenty of gorgeous 100% rayon embroidery thread available.
- Thread for the bobbin. This won’t be seen on the surface, so you can use anything you want. Trying to find a way to get rid of that day-glo orange thread you can’t remember why you bought? Stick it in the bobbin when you embroider. Some embroiderers feel that it’s best to use a softer thread (like 100% cotton) in the bobbin so as to reduce the possibility that the bobbin thread will break the embroidery thread, but your authors haven’t had a problem with this to date.
