Get Your Stitch on with These Beginner-Friendly Embroidery Kits
- Words by Peppermint
Ever since Emma Downing of Yarn Industries took us into the magical world of embroidery – you can find four exclusive Peppermint embroidery patterns in Issue 51 or in Sew&Tell Issue 1 – we here at Peppermint have been OBSESSED with getting our stitch on.
Hand embroidery can be a meditative practice that creates complex and beautiful artworks in fabric form. It can also give you all the fun of drawing on your clothes when you were a kid, while being adult appropriate, kind of posh, and lasting through a good laundry cycle. It’s a great way to add individualism and style to your wardrobe or spruce up an old piece that no longer sparks joy.
If you want to dip your toe into the waters of embroidering, a great place to start is with a ready-made kit. An embroidery kit provides all basic tools you’ll need to get started (a hoop, needles, thread, fabric to embroider) in one fell swoop, as well as a gorgeous design to banish those blank page (or fabric) blues, plus all of the instructions you need to ensure your work of art turns out looking as beautiful as the one on the box. Kits can help build your confidence and proficiency until you feel ready to go rogue one day, freehand style, embroidering everything in sight.
To that end, we’ve found five beginner-appropriate and super cute embroidery kits to help you take your first steps on the not-so-long and arduous journey of becoming a master of the craft!
Yarn Industries
Our personal embroidery guide Emma from Yarn Industries actually offers a beginners’ embroidery kit, a deluxe box that contains everything you need to learn the craft of embroidery and create a gorgeous piece of Australiana hoop art (you can choose between Gum Leaf, Banksia, Wattle or Parakeet designs). Each kit contains a ‘Beginners Guide to Embroidery’ booklet that has step-by-step instructions for all the stitches you need to know and tips and tricks to guide you on future projects. The kit even includes test fabric for you to practise your stitches on – now that’s forward thinking!
Hook, Line & Tinker
Hook, Line & Tinker was launched by Laurie Dolhan in 2017, providing embroidery patterns and kits based on Laurie’s original illustrations. Her patterns are striking yet simple, perfect for a novice needler with limited colour palettes and basic introductory stitches. Her collections are sorted by recurring motifs and themes and come in three levels of increasing difficulty. Our favourites are the nautical designs like this Deep Dive kit, a first-time-friendly kit inspired by Moby Dick’s majestic whales.
Tusk and Twine
Self-taught embroidery artist Kate Beardmore created Tusk and Twine as a passion project to combine her love of textiles and hand stitching and her background in graphic design. Her work is lush as all get out, with crisp line art and colourful bursts of botanical detail. This Grow Wild embroidery kit creates a gorgeous five-inch work of art and comes with all the supplies you’ll need, as well as all important information on materials, transferring your pattern, preparing your hoop and starting to stitch.
RikRack
RikRack’s founder Riki Inge has a masters degree in textile design with specialisation in embroidery and dyeing. Those skills combine in her embroidery kits, where the intricate yet deceptively easy designs come pre-printed on the fabric, saving you the hassle of pattern transferring all those sumptuous little flourishes. This bee-utiful kit is appropriate for “beginners and beyond” and not only comes with instructions but has its own page on rikrack.com full of tips, tricks and troubleshooting!
Brynn and Co
How could we here at ‘Have Hope’ Headquarters resist Brynn & Co’s brilliant, botanical, negative-space, positive-slogan pieces? Despite the overall dazzling effect, the design utilises only a handful of common embroidery stitches and includes a visual, step-by-step guide to the creation process. This kit comes with fabric pre-printed with the design as well as a paper copy of the pattern so once you get your hand in you can sew it again and again and again, on anything your heart desires!
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On the 14th of April 2013 the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, tragically killing 1134 workers and injuring over 2,500 more.
Every year we commemorate this devastating and avoidable loss of life and advocate for better working conditions for all during Fashion Revolution Week, which runs from 22nd-28th April in 2026.
This year there are different themes for each day of the week, with the annual Mend In Public day falling right in the middle, on Saturday 25th April.
This is your cue to gather your community, settle in and commit some time, attention and creativity to mending your clothes in the pursuit of extending their life in your wardrobe. Be it patching, embroidery, sewing or stitching, there are many ways to resolve structural and aesthetic issues in your garments that will see you donning them for years to come!
If it’s a bit tricky to get mending on the day itself (it will be ANZAC Day here in Australia) then fear not. Any time is the right time for mending so if you need to take needle in hand on another day that will do just fine!
Comment below if you know of any events you`d like to share happening in your community.
Learn more and get involved:
@FashionRevolutionAustralia
@Fash_Rev
FashionRevolution.org
#FashionRevolution #WhoMadeMyClothes #MendInPublicDay
“This is just a reminder to you to go for your big dreams! They might just work out.” ❤️
And we’re so glad you did, Emma!
From @CinnamonDaisyStudio:
No biggie, I’m just in a really cool magazine 🥹
When @Laura_The_Maker reached out to me last year to ask if I’d be interested in being featured in @PeppermintMagazine I didn’t hold back. I 100% fan girled 🤣 it was obviously a yes!
Getting to talk about the positive impact sewing your own clothes has on your body image is the BEST. I started sewing my own clothes because the standard doesn’t fit me. But I wasn’t expecting to heal my body image at the same time. What a wonderful byproduct ❤️🩹
So this is just a reminder to you to go for your big dreams! They might just work out ❤️
Mother`s Day Chocolate Treats Subscription Special! 🌟
This very sweet subscription offer comes with some glorious goodies, thanks to our friends at @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo!
Our lovely community manager Em, runs us through the offer.
SUBSCRIBE FOR $79 AND RECEIVE:
🌟 1 x 12-month Peppermint Subscription!
PLUS!
🌟 Vegan, gluten-free, 43% cocoa, Certified-Organic Taming The Jackalope Drinking Chocolate from @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo
🌟 Vegan, gluten-free, 70% cocoa, Certified-Organic Ship To Wreck Chocolate Flakes from @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo
🌟 Issue 64 (includes a free code for the #PeppermintDaisyDress digital sewing pattern!)
🌟 A5 art card of our exclusive ‘Together We Rise’ Issue 60 cover design by @LukeJohnMatthewArnold
🌟 All wrapped in fabric from @DoopsDesigns
Price includes postage! This special offer is available to Australian addresses only. Don`t miss out – there`s limited numbers!
🌟 Link in bio!
#PeppermintMagazine #MothersDay
Calling all brands who give a damn! 📣
Bookings for our wonderful Sew&Tell digital issue are now open – if you are an awesome creative brand that fits right in with Peppermint`s ethos of style, sustainability, sewing and substance, get in touch. Or if you know of one who might be keen – tag them below. We have packages for budgets both big and small, but spots are limited, so don`t wait too long to get in touch!
Drop us a line at Mandy@PeppermintMag.Com for a chat with Mandy, our lovely advertising manager – she`ll help you find the best way to share your good work with our awesome audience.
We`d sew love to work with you! ✨️🧵✨️
#PeppermintSewAndTell
💛 BFF GIVEAWAY 💛
Generous, messy, creative, spiky, warm, enigmatic… our best friends come in many flavours. But they all have one thing in common: they make the world a far better, more interesting place to be.
Inspired by Sam and Sadie’s complicated ‘forever’ bond in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by @GabrielleZevin (a firm Peppermint fave ‘friendy’ read), we’ve rounded up some iconic fictional duos from books, movies and TV - the ride-or-dies, bosom buddies, chosen family, the ‘you’re-my-person’ people.
They all remind us that the non-romantic kind of love is always worth the effort (and it’s often the kind that lasts!). Think Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, Calvin and Hobbes, Snoopy and Woodstock, Eloise and Penelope… Head to the link in bio to read the full story and meet them all!
We’ve got two copies of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to gift to one lucky Peppermint reader and their bestie, thanks to @PenguinBooksAus.
To enter:
✨Follow us and @PenguinBooksAus
✨Tag your best friend in the comments
✨Tell them why they’re so darn great!
Because as Sadie tells Sam: true collaborators in life are rare. And very much worth celebrating.
Winner drawn Tuesday 21 April 2pm. Australian addresses only. Good luck! 📖
#BFF #BookGiveaway #TomorrowAndTomorrowAndTomorrow
Mother`s Day Chocolate Treats Subscription Special! 🌟
It`s almost time to celebrate that special person in your life who has motherly energy – mum, aunty, single parent, queer parent, grandparent, caregiver... or maybe just someone who happens to love getting chocolate treats (and hey, maybe that someone is YOU!).
This very sweet subscription offer comes with some glorious goodies, thanks to our friends at @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo!
SUBSCRIBE FOR $79 AND RECEIVE:
🌟 1 x 12-month Peppermint Subscription
PLUS!
🌟 Vegan, gluten-free, 43% cocoa, Certified-Organic Taming The Jackalope Drinking Chocolate from @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo
🌟 Vegan, gluten-free, 70% cocoa, Certified-Organic Ship To Wreck Chocolate Flakes from @TheOriginalCocoaTradersCo
🌟 Issue 64 (includes a free code for the #PeppermintDaisyDress digital sewing pattern!)
🌟 A5 art card of our exclusive ‘Together We Rise’ Issue 60 cover design by @LukeJohnMatthewArnold
🌟 All wrapped in fabric from @DoopsDesigns
Price includes postage! This special offer is available to Australian addresses only. Don`t miss out – there`s limited numbers!
🌟 Link in bio 🌟
#PeppermintMagazine #MothersDay
