What is the difference between hand embroidery and machine embroidery?

Embroidery craft is rich in forms and unique in style. It is one of the traditional folk crafts in China, and it is also the most traditional and flexible design method in fashion design crafts.

Hand embroidery is one of China's intangible cultural heritages. Nowadays, traditional hand embroidery is used less and less in clothing, and most of it has been replaced by machine embroidery. The tools used in hand embroidery and machine embroidery are different, so the embroidery effects are also different. Can you tell the difference between hand embroidery and machine embroidery?

1. Feel

Hand embroidery: soft to the touch, the thread material adopts natural silk, commonly known as "floral thread" with natural luster.

Machine embroidery: The silk thread adopts chemical fiber material, which is relatively smooth. When the machine embroiders, the silk thread is pulled tighter, so it is impossible to use natural silk thread to produce it through the machine, it feels hard.

2. Fineness

Hand embroidery: The silk thread used can be split. A hand-embroidered picture, due to the craftsmanship, it needs to use threads of different thicknesses to embroider in the process of embroidering the picture, if you look carefully, you can see it.

Machine embroidery: The thread used cannot be broken due to technical reasons, so the entire screen has the same thickness of the thread, resulting in a relatively dull effect.

3. Color

Hand embroidery: The color transition is naturally blended, with a sense of reality and vividness.

Machine embroidery: The color matching is not as uniform as manual, and the transition in some places is not as flexible as manual, it is relatively rigid.

4. Arrangement of Embroidery Threads

Hand embroidery: Because it is hand-embroidered, the length of each stitch cannot be the same, you can see it if you look carefully.

Machine embroidery: Embroidery threads are arranged neatly and orderly, and the pin distribution is very regular. Because the production process is controlled by computer programs, they will break if the stitches are long and the threads are thin.

5. Grade and quality

Hand embroidery: Embroidery fabric of different specifications and sizes can be customized; each piece of embroidery is unique and has collection value.

Machine embroidery: It only can be made low-end embroidery handicrafts, the middle-end and above embroidery cannot be completed by machine embroidery at all, and the artistic effects cannot be expressed.