Embroidery on Paper - How & Why

You've probably seen lots of wonderful, quality decorative papers in your local craft shop, or office supplies store.

The good news is that certain types of them can be used with great success for embroidery. If you pick up a paper of appropriate weight and type, you can make something really extraordinary and beautiful. Like unique embroidered postcard, bookmark, lampshade, Chinese lantern, fan or just unusual artworks to decorate your walls.

So, in this tutorial we'll show you how to embroider on suitable types of paper. You'll also see how to make lovely postcards in no time.

There are a lot of various types of decorative paper available on market. Some of them are very good for embroidery, most are not perfect, but can still be used, with certain "tricks". Some are absolutely not suitable. You will learn to distinguish between various types of paper in no time, after going through a few projects online, and practicing a little.

Just read through the instructions below, and carefully look at photos, before rushing to buy tons of cool papers. The projects should give you a pretty good understanding about the best paper types for embroidery, how each one can be used and should be treated.

If you embroider directly on paper that is too thin, the results will be SAD. Also, avoid extremely dense designs. Postcards you'll see below are embroidered with machine cross-stitch designs in 14 count. Think that the 14 count cross-stitches look especially good and bold on paper, because of its softness and texture.

Not every design is good for embroidery on paper. Designs with low density and little number of stitches usually are the best. Machine cross-stitch designs and running stitch designs are perfect for paper embroidery. Here are links to designs that we believe to be most suitable:

The first project is a classic example of using very lightweight paper, that on its own isn't suitable for embroidery, together with strong craft paper that makes it all possible.

This (very unusual!) paper coaster postcard, with instructions, has been emailed to us by Marie Claude Goulet from Ste-Luce, Canada. Many thanks to Marie Claude for the brilliant idea and project. Of course you can do the same with other lightweight papers that you'd love to use. It doesn't necessarily need to be a coaster.

In our second example, we will show how to embroider on heavyweight Mulberry paper, that is perfect for this purpose, because of its weight and structure.

Both designs used in these two projects are in cross-stitch technique, because machine cross-stitch designs are very suitable for embroidering on paper. They have perfect density for this purpose.