I learned to embroidery in Vacation Bible School when I was about 10 or so. Start out with a pattern that you can get at WalMart, iron it on to a piece of muslin & just start stitching the stem stitch (or outline stitch). Most patterns give you directions on how to make the stitches. I always use DMC embroidery thread. They never discontinue colors.

Seems like my Mom always had some embroidery (along with sewing clothes, curtains, etc) sitting around--she either did handwork or read a book while watching TV. Can remember in 2nd grade Blue Birds (jr. CampFire Girls) we learned to embroidery a tea towel for our Mom's for Mother's Day--a picture of a Blue Bird on a Dogwood branch--well, this was when EVERY girl wore skirts to school so we were all in uniforms with skirts and about half of us sewed the tea towels to our skirts!

I can't remember now, who taught me to embroider, but I'm sure it was either my Mom or my Grandma (Mom's Mother). I have done quite a bit of embroidery work for myself, and a whole-cloth embroidered quilt (my avatar is a picture of this quilt). My judgment is that I should have had more variations in the embroidery floss I used in order to better manifest what I was embroidering. This embroidery object began as a 3" X 4" image on the University of Arkansas website. I drew, enlarged, re-drew, re-enlarged and kept enlarging and redrawing until I had it the size I ended up with. It took me 5 months to do the satin-stitch embroidery for that Arkansas Razorback. I've done some other things -- my cousin had a wish for an embroidered "Sooner Schooner" covered wagon (she's from Oklahoma), and I'm currently have some projects underway, but not finished. I then got involved in making a quilt for the son of a very good friend of mine, who served in the U.S. Army, in Afghanistan and was seriously injured there. That quilt is almost completed. Hand embroidery is much like painting with thread. There's no end to what you can make with embroidery. Hand embroidery is NOT that difficult. I will say this -- I tried counted cross-stitch -- somehow it just didn't work for me. I do enjoy creating an image from embroidery. I frequently draw or trace my embroidery patterns from an image I see -- an image which is not a part of any commercial embroidery pattern.
Jeanette

Oh quiltingshorttimer I did the same thing! It was murder cutting out all those stitches. I had almost forgotten that.

Makes me laugh just to think about this! I remember how proud many of the Blue Bird girls where and jumped up and held out their embroidered tea towels only to yank up their skirts too! I'm sitting here right now laughing about the memory!