Embroidery (刺绣) has a long history and can date back to the Warring States period in China. Embroidery is very popular in many countries such as China, India, and Japan. Embroidery is the handicraft (手工艺) of decorating fabric (衣料) or other materials with needles and thread or yarn. Embroidery may also use other materials such as metal strips, pearls, quills, and sequins. Embroidery is most often used on caps, hats, coats, blankets, stockings, and golf shirts. Embroidery is available with a wide variety of thread or yarn colour.
Embroidery has many unique characteristics (特点). One of the interesting characteristics of embroidery is the basic techniques or stitches (针法), such as the chain stitch, the button hole or the blanket stitch, the running stitch, the satin stitch and the cross stitch. They are still the fundamental techniques of hand embroidery today.
Embroidery can be classified (分类) according to whether the design is stitched on top of or through the foundation fabric; and by the relationship of stitch placement to the fabric. Different embroidery has its own advantages and disadvantages. In the modern society, we can produce many different embroideries. Machine embroidery is one of them. It appears in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution.
