I’m pretty excited – I discovered an amazing treasure: the Henry Art Gallery Stitch Identification Guide at http://dig.henryart.org/embroidery-stitches/first_level_pages/contents.htm. This resource is maintained by the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, and was created through analyzing “the stitches on approximately 3,500 pieces in the Henry Art Gallery Collection including items from China, India, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and other embroidery traditions.” Not only do they have an extensive stitch dictionary with diagrams and references, their collection of textiles has been photographed, tagged by the stitches identified in them, and is searchable online (by stitch!) at http://henryart.org/collections.
A few more stitch dictionaries:
- Sharon B (Pin Tangle)’s dictionary http://inaminuteago.com/stitchindex.html is inspiring. There’s a lot of interesting stitches, they are all photographed, and many also have pictures of the stitch used in one of her pieces.
- Mary Corbet has a video stitch dictionary: each stitch has a youtube tutorial. http://www.needlenthread.com/videos
- For a slightly different flavor of stitch dictionary, take a look at the Totsuka Embroidery Institute (Google translated from Japanese to English) http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.totsuka-shisyu.com/contents/manual/stitch/index.htm&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&twu=1
embroidery for ducks 