Embroidery Art with Lettering: Negative Type Designs

Embroidery artist Theresa Wensing combines provocative lettering with cheerful pastels and floral motifs to create art that reflects her character and humor. With viral reels and TikTok, she wants to show people how modern and progressive embroidery can be and bring this ancient yet so changeable craft closer to them. She produces her own digital designs that she sells through her Etsy shop and is already followed by over 100,000 people on Instagram where she shares her embroidery projects and patterns.

In this Domestika course she will teach you how to create embroidery art with lettering in different ways. Let yourself be enchanted by this meditative craft and embroider negative lettering of your choice with needle and thread!

At the beginning of the course you will get to know Theresa Wensing, your teacher for this course. She tells you why she learned to embroider and why she wants to teach other people this ancient craft. Afterwards you will learn more about the influences that have shaped her style.

The next unit is all about preparing your own project. First you will learn which materials you need and what you should pay attention to when buying. Then you will learn how to thread the needle without a needle threader, how long the thread should be and why a knot at the end of the thread is important. Theresa will then teach you how to cut the fabric and how to hoop it in the embroidery frame.

Next, you’ll familiarize yourself with the basic features of ProCreate that you’ll need to draw the template for your final project.
You’ll then learn four basic stitches you’ll need for your final project: the wrapped backstitch, the satin stitch, the Coral Knot stitch, and the herringbone stitch. Then you create your embroidery design with reverse type. First, you’ll learn how to use Pinterest and other resource sites to gather design and color ideas in the form of a mood board, and use those ideas to create the template in ProCreate, which you then transfer to the fabric.

Theresa also gives you tips on what you should pay attention to when copying and what you should consider when choosing the material so that the negative writing is particularly sharp and clean. At Theresa’s side you will embroider the final project step by step. Here you will use the basic stitches you have learned and let Theresa’s other tips guide you to embroider neatly. Finally, you will learn how to properly stage your project for Instagram. To do this, she shares her photo and editing tips as well as other helpful apps.