Mirror Work Tutorial

You must have seen many tutorials on how to do mirror work. This is also one of them but a little different. This tutorial will teach you to secure mirror to the fabric with a new stitch. This stitch will give your mirror work a totally new look.
First let me show you how will it look like after its completion, we use a little bit of wheel stitch while doing the mirror work.


1. Take a medium sized round mirror, hold it firmly to the fabric, bring the needle to the front from point A and take it to the rare at point B over the mirror. Sometimes it is a better practice to glue the mirror to the fabric before stitching, in this way the mirror does not gets loose.

2. Make another stitch over the mirror this time horizontally, to make a ‘+’ sign. Do two more stitches to make an ‘x’ over the previously made ‘+’. Now the foundation stitches are complete. They should look like the following picture.

3. Now bring the needle to the front to the left of pt. B (say the pt. B’). Take it to the rare from the right of pt. B (let this pt be C)and then bring it back near pt.B’(let this pt be D).

4. Take the needle below the spook B from the right side and bring it up to the left. This stitch will be on the mirror and will not pierce the fabric. Hold the thread tightly to keep the stitch in place.


5. Repeat step 3, this time take the needle to the rare from the right of the pt. C and bring it up to the left of the pt. D. Needle should pierce the fabric this time.

6. Repeat step 4 & 5, four times and then weave the needle 3 -4 times over and under the spook B.

7. First spoke is completed, now move to the second spook. Repeat the above steps 3 – 6 for the second spook.


8. After the completion of five spokes the stitch looks like this.

9. Working with last spoke is as follows

10. Weave the needle below spook B and take it out from the left side, from there take the needle to the back of the fabric between the spook B and last spook on its right.

Mirror Work in Pakistan

Mirror work, commonly known as the shisha stitch is the art of securing mirrors to the fabric by using some particular stitches like harring bone stitch, button hole stitch or blanket stitch. This mirror work is the speciality of Indian subcontinent. They are vastly used in different regional hand embroidery of Pakistan, with the combination of other stitches.These mirrors are used to decorate different things like clothing, wall hangings, shawls, bedding, cushion covers and table runners etc.


The mirrors are small pieces of looking mirrors, and they can be of different shapes and sizes, though most popular of them is circular shape. Other than that these can be square or diamond. Normally the round ones are available in three sizes, the smallest which is also called the zero size, the medium and the largest. In addition to these, some large sequences with the hole in the middle of them can also be used in the mirror work.

The following mirror work cushion is an example of the hardwork of the females of the Interior Sind, Tharparkar. To buy the item contact the following site http://www.dukandar.com/dar.com

In Fashion Industry of Pakistan, the mirror work is quickly becoming the new trend. Mirror work shirts and apprael are now a necessary item in a Designer's wardrobe.

For the mirror work tutorials many sites are available on the net, which give you the detailed information of how to stitch the mirrors to the fabric. Some of them are:

http://www.embroiderersguild.com/

http://www.joyfulabode.com/