Embroidery Club with Liss Cooke

The YCA Embroidery Club - created by Young Creative Awards 2018 winner Liss Cooke - gives you a week's worth of free downloadable embroidery templates, each accompanied by step-by-step demo videos.

The YCA Embroidery Club is a fun, creative project to provide a little bit of distraction from the world outside.

As Liss explains, “the templates are customisable and the videos are just a guide – so feel free to get creative and use whatever fabric you have to hand, colours you love and whatever materials you can get hold of.”

To take part in the YCA Embroidery Club you will need:

Needles (hand embroidery needles and/or beading needles)
Scissors
Thread – ideally in a range of colours
Base fabric (could be anything – even an old garment)
Selection of mixed beads and sequins for embellishment (you can also break apart old/unwanted jewellery)
Pencil
Tracing paper if you don’t have a printer
Pen such as a sharpie or felt tip if you need to trace

Additional items that may be useful:

Embroidery hoop- this really helps!
Fabric pen
Light box/ light pad for tracing

Along with each video, there is a written step-by-step guide for each template, with more detail on embroidery/ embellishment techniques.

To help get you started, here are the basic things you will need to do before you begin with the embroidery:

Print the embroidery template. If you don’t have a printer you can lightly trace the template directly from a screen using tracing paper.
Retrace the template onto your fabric using either pencil or a fabric pen if you have one. I did this with a light pad underneath which was really helpful.
Thread your needle (be sure to put a knot in the end of your thread to stop it pulling through!)
If you have one, put your fabric into an embroidery hoop and pull it taught all around.
Start embroidering! You can follow my guide and use similar colours/materials and techniques to those that I pick or you can just use the template as a guide and design your own using whatever materials you may have.
Always be sure to securely tie off your thread when you finish.
Share your embroidery with the hashtag #YCAEmbroideryClub on Instagram!