Embroidery is the craft of embellishing cloth, fabric, etc, with thread or yarn in order to decorate it. It is a type of needlework which uses cotton, silk, wool or any other type of thread cabable of being threaded through a needle and then the material to be decorated.

Embroidery almost certainly sprang from the function of repairing, mending or strengthening fabric. Although its origins have been lost in time, surviving examples of Embroidery exist from the Iron Age, from ancient Egypt and from China’s Zhou Dynasty, so it can be safely said that the art or craft of Embroidery dates back at least 3,000 years.

Over the course of that time, the actual Embroidery stitches used has changed very little.

Read the full Third Age Embroidery article here.