Do your hands hurt while you are busy making embroidery stitches?
Most of the time we creative people don’t believe the way to avoid the suffering our hands go through until it happens – even from embroidery.
Maybe you’re one of those embroidery lovers who like to stitch and stitch and stitch all day long.
Once you’re in “the flow” of embroidering it’s hard to prevent – especially once you have an audiobook or series running within the background.
The problem with this is often that it can harm the hand’s joints and can lead to a distributed shortening of your finger muscles, arms, and hands.
With time your whole body will suffer due to excessive stitching. And don’t forget about the awful posture we tend to possess while stitching!
What if…
One of the most important fears we’ve isn’t ready to use our hands at some point in my life.
Many of the crafty people near you’ll overdo it with the various crafts they did (like knitting whole sweaters during a day by hand) and now they can’t use their hands for crafting anymore because they hurt and stiffen once they hold a needle for a moment.
Don’t let it come so far! it’s totally unnecessary to wreck your body for a reasonable tambour on the wall.
Now, let’s mention the ideas and tricks which will assist you to avoid pain while embroidering with your hands.
How to avoid pain during hand embroidering
First, confine mind that monotone movements always damage the body over time if you don’t do other movements to balance it out.
So, once you are embroidering for hours you technically got to do counter exercises for hours, too, or have those counter-movements integrated into your life.
1. Take Breaks – Often
This is the simplest thanks to preventing hurting hands.
For every quarter-hour of sewing take an opportunity of 5 minutes.
Maybe you would like to stitch longer in one sitting, then fine, do a half-hour of sewing, and an opportunity of 10-15 minutes. Get yourself a tea or coffee, ask someone, actually watch people walking by from your window or check out that series that runs within the background and let your mind wander.
Shake out your hands and get up, walk around. Do some situps and jumping jacks (no, we are just kidding, be happy to try to do it though.
Here is another tip you’ll follow:
Especially when working together with your eyes so on the brink of something, it’s crucial to let your eyes wander in other distances, too, or else, you will hurt your eyes additionally to your hands.
2. Tools for Avoiding Additional Strain On Your Hands
Now, let’s mention hoop stands now? they’re a lifesaver for your hands. rather than holding the frame firmly together with your one hand, you’ll relax a touch bit and use the hand to truly help the working hand with embroidering.
If you’re wont to stitching with two hands, you furthermore may deduct a number of the strain off your working hand because it doesn’t need to do all of the work all the time.
Then, there are thimbles. you would possibly hear many of us telling you that the leather thimbles are great. If you’re comfortable with the clunky metal ones then you’ll give the leather thimbles a try.
3. Examine what hurts after stitching for an extended time
Everyone features a different posture, grip on the needle, and overall different problems with their health.
What is it that begins to harm after stitching for too long?
Maybe your working hand feels stiff because you’ve got a really firm grip on your needle. Maybe your neck hurts because you’ve got an unhealthy posture while stitching (guilty of that!).
Examine what hurts and check out to ascertain why that would be and what you’ll do to vary that.
Tips to relieve the pain in your hands
When it’s already hurting we recommend you visit a physiotherapist who can offer you exercises that are fit your specific needs. Most of the time it’s not just the hand that’s hurting.
Additionally, you’ll try hand exercises. They balance the monotone movements we neutralize our crafts (which often is more of a grabbing movement – holding the frame and needle).
Remember, be gentle with yourself. No crafty project is worth risking your health for!
Conclusion
These are some useful tips that are super-handy for you to avoid pain in your hands while doing hand embroidery. For new quilters and stitchers, it is crucial to be resilient and have a balance between your workflow.
Follow these tips and you will surely be able to avoid harming your hands during embroidery. If you have any questions about the topic or anything related to custom embroidery digitizing, feel free to reach out to us at Migdigitizing. We will be happy to assist you.