About Becka Rahn

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20 March, 2025

How do I Start to Learn Hand Embroidery?

beckarahn2025-03-20T17:19:48-05:00Embroidery, Everything Else|1 Comment

I had a great email question a few days ago from a person who wanted to know how to get started learning to do hand embroidery. A friend of hers had taken several of my classes and said “Talk to Becka!” but she didn’t know what to choose. So I thought it would be helpful to write a post to help everyone find the right place for you to get started learning to embroider with me. I teach in a whole bunch of different formats so it can be hard to know where to start. Whether you like to learn in-person, online, from a book, from a pattern, or one-on-one, I’ve got everything broken down so you can find the right fit for you.

Beginners start here.

Check my Classes & Events page for upcoming Zoom and in-person classes. These class projects usually feature 1-3 different stitches so you can get an idea if you like to embroider and all of the materials are included so you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of tools and materials.
If you like to work from written instructions, then check out the patterns in my Etsy shop. The Sheep, Cat and Dog are especially great for beginners. These patterns need just basic materials like scissors, needle, thread, and some felt and they have a QR code link to demo videos of each stitch.
If you like to work from videos, then look on my Online Classes page. The Tropical Fish Bag or Sashiko Inspired Squares are great beginner classes. These each have a printed fabric panel with guidelines on it to help you make your stitches. You can order these from my Spoonflower shop and use any embroidery threads you have already.

Then try…

In my Etsy shop, the patterns for the Toad, Owl and Elephant are great for adventurous beginners. They make a great second project.
On my classes page, try out the Cactus Garden or Strawberry Needlebooks classes for a little more challenge. They are slightly more complex stitches that incorporate sequins and layered pieces. The Cactus Garden also has a printed panel to follow where the Strawberry Needlebooks class uses a washaway stabilizer that you can stitch through.
If you have a Skillshare membership, you can find my Candy Canes Two Ways class, Ice Cream Cones, and some bookbinding classes that also incorporate embroidery with paper.
I also offer private lessons booked through Skillshare. You can choose a specific stitch or project that you are trying to do and I will customize a lesson just for you. Just check out my Skillshare profile to see the details.

Ready for a challenge…

Try the Parakeet and Dinosaur in a Sweater patterns in my Etsy shop. They have more kinds of stitches and pieces to assemble.
Sparkling Snowflakes on my classes page is the most complex design to stitch. It only uses one color of thread, but many many more stitches since you repeat the rays of the snowflake 6 times. It has a printed panel to help you keep the snowflake symmetrical.
On Skillshare, I have three Advanced Embroidery classes that focus on a single complex stitch. You can check out Oyster Stitch, Lattice Stitch and Buttonhole Cable Chain.
If you like to learn from books instead, here are a couple of my favorites:
- Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery by Sharon Boggon Sharon includes photos for both right and left handed stitchers, which is so great!
- The Embroiderer’s Handbook by Margie Bauer
- Beaded Embroidery Stitching by Christen Brown (I have a slightly different edition, but this looks similar)

18 March, 2025

Teacher Tips: What to do when a class gets cancelled

beckarahn2025-03-18T12:41:01-05:00An Artist's Life, Classes & Teaching|0 Comments

I’ve been teaching for more than 20 years as an independent contractor. That means that most of the time, I am partnered up with an organization like my county library system, an art center, shop or museum and teaching a class with them. Sometimes those classes get cancelled. There are lots of different reasons for that (like pandemics and weather) but most often it’s because there are not enough people signed up to make the math work out. So I thought I’d write a little about what I do when a class gets cancelled, especially for those of you who might be new to teaching or thinking about teaching your first class.

Don’t take it personally.

My first tip is to not take it personally. There are so many reasons that people don’t sign up for classes and almost all of them have nothing to do with you. I was supposed to teach a class tonight, which is why this topic is on my mind. We realized much later after we set the date for this one, that it falls right in the middle of spring break for the school district that art center is in. Oops. I don’t live in that district so I didn’t even think about that, but it means a lot of people are busy. I’m also a new teacher for this venue. Which means the community there doesn’t know me yet.

Before I worked as an artist full time, I was the education administrator at an art center. I scheduled all of the adults classes. It happened SO often there that we had a kind of unwritten expectation that a class would always cancel the very first time you offered it. There’s a commonly quoted stat that says someone has to see something like an ad 7 times before they will act on it. I think this is the case with these classes. People only registered the second time they saw it, thinking “Oh it looked fun, that must be popular since it’s there again, I should sign up”.

It’s really discouraging, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of work that goes into proposing and planning a class that can seem like a waste so I have some other things I do to try and capture some of that back in a positive way.

Talk to your partner.

Communicate with your partner org. Often they are the ones taking registrations and talking to people about the class much more than I am. What questions did people ask about the class? Was there “buzz”?

I once answered a “call for class proposals” from a shop who said their customers were super enthusiastic about a class on needle felting. But that class was cancelled without a single registration. Based on the feedback the shop got, I think it was priced too high because of the tools and materials needed to get you started in a total beginners class. In retrospect, it would have maybe been better to do a demo or a tiny make-and-take project that could act like an appetizer for class. That was valuable information.

Recently I pitched a class to one organization and they didn’t love the project and so we did something else. But I saved it and pitched the same project again to a different partner, who added it to the schedule. The students loved it so much, one suggested I do a whole series of classes based around the theme of that project. I trust my partner orgs to know their community (who they work with every day) better than I do and I think both orgs made the right call.

What can you reuse?

Classes take a lot of preparation. There is a project to design, samples to make, materials to select. When a class is cancelled, I look at what I’ve got prepared and think about how else I could use it because I’ve already done all of that work. So the first thing I think about is: could I teach this in a different format?

Could it be an online class?
A pattern to sell on Etsy?
A tutorial for my blog?
A make-along or educational posts on social media?
Could I combine it with another project to make a more advanced class? Or simplify it more for beginners?

I almost never teach something once and drop it. I like to think of my classes having more of a life cycle that I can adapt and grow and change to use different ways.

Look at everything with a fresh eye.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a really common phrase but we absolutely all do it. The title, description and photo that go with your class are a tiny bit of information that are trying to communicate so much information. I was working on proposals for a conference yesterday that had a 450 character limit to describe a 2 day class. Getting all of the info for 2 days of class into 3-4 sentences is HARD.

Before I put it out there again, I look at everything that I used to represent the class and try to change it up. Sometimes I make new samples to photograph or just take new photos of the samples I have. I look at the description and think about how I might change the focus or “vibe” of the class. Can I rewrite it to sound more casual? more structured? more technique focused? What fits with the other classes that are being taught at that venue? How can I change the title to make it more clear/fun/appealing?

I try to get someone else to read the description and ask me questions about it. What doesn’t make sense? Or have someone describe back to me what they think is going to happen in class when they read the description.

I remember working on a submitted class proposal when I was an arts admin. It was a great class: good description, good price, good project. But the class samples in the photos were so unappealing. It was a class sewing undies, which I think our audience would have signed up for, but the photos were terrible. There were three samples but all made from the same materials so they looked mostly the same and the colors were odd and unflattering. The photos were dark and looked like they’d been photographed on the floor (which made me think of dirty laundry). Those photos were not communicating all the good parts of the class.

Fill the time.

One of the hardest things about the pandemic shutdown was that I got a “sorry your class/event has been cancelled” email about once a week for months. I felt like I had been slowly crushed. The thing I learned from that was to not let my brain get into a cycle of “I was supposed to be teaching a class right now, but it got cancelled and I am a failure.” And the way to do that was to fill that time I had set aside to teach the class with something good. Over the pandemic, I illustrated a children’s book in all of my newly free time.

Since I was supposed to be teaching tonight, I am instead going to try out a new recipe for grilled paneer with a mint and cilantro sauce. I’ve never made it before so that will be a fun project because I love to cook. A few weeks ago another class was cancelled and I used that day instead to play with a new design and it turned into a new pattern for my Etsy shop; something that wasn’t on my planned goals for the year. It feels like an awesome bonus instead of something discouraging.

11 March, 2025

International Art & Found Day 2025

beckarahn2025-03-11T11:01:26-05:00An Artist's Life, Freebies & Patterns|2 Comments

One of my goals for my business this year was to “Bring more joy.” and tomorrow’s project is going to do exactly that. I am participating in International Art & Found Day, a day when thousands of artworks from artists all over the world will be placed within their local communities for neighboring residents to find. #artandfoundday

I found out about this from a follow artist friend and it happens to land on my Dad’s birthday. What better way to celebrate (since my dad is also an artist) than to share some art out in the world. And when I read the history of the project, the reason that the founder chose March 12 is because it was her dad’s birthday too.

The idea is that artists package up any kind of art and put it out in the world for others to find. Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty nice weather, so I am going to take a walk and put things in my neighborhood. I will be sharing photos on my Instagram, kind of like a scavenger hunt.

According to the website right now, there are 1600+ artists participating from 47 different countries. That link will let you check the map and see if there is some art happening near you. If not, I am ALSO going to hide a couple of photos on my website for a virtual art drop on Wednesday March 12. If you find one of those photos and email me a screen shot I will send you an art drop surprise.

What art am I going to share? I always make a sample along with my students when I teach a class so I have all kinds of cute felt animals: frogs, sheep, toucans, cats, dogs. I have more samples than I will ever need so I am really excited to share these and send them off to new homes.

5 March, 2025

Embroidery Tutorial: Tying a Knot

beckarahn2025-03-05T11:52:46-06:00Everything Else|Comments Off on Embroidery Tutorial: Tying a Knot

A few posts back, I wrote a tutorial about how to prevent and untie knots in your embroidery, but sometimes you need a knot to finish off a row of stitches. This is the way I tie knots in thicker fabrics like felt or fleece where you can stitch just part way through the fabric without it showing on the front side. Here’s a video showing a short demonstration.

The step where you put the fabric down on the table and hold it with your fingers is actually more important than you might think. It’s easy, especially with felt, to pull or stretch the fabric as you pull on the thread. Holding it against the table, helps stabilize it so you are less likely to pull it apart.

If you have a thinner fabric, you can tie a knot the same way but you need to make that first anchor stitch a little differently, by stitching into the back of another stitch nearby or in a way that you can hide it under another stitch.

24 February, 2025

Scarves Don’t Sell: Lessons Learned from 20 years Running an Etsy Shop

beckarahn2025-02-27T10:35:29-06:00An Artist's Life, Etsy|2 Comments

I opened my first Etsy shop in August 2005 and I’ve been an active seller that entire time. I’ve seen every variation, iteration, experiment, and mistake that Etsy’s made in all of those years. That original shop has had a little bit of everything but for the most part it’s been focused on what I call “fiber art geekery”, kits and project bags for all kinds of fiber crafters.

One thing I’ve learned is that having a focus or niche for your shop is helpful. So in 2017, I opened a second shop so I could focus it on a specific line of work that I was making that was really different than my original shop. Everything in my “Pixelated by Becka Rahn” shop was made from fabrics I designed and printed at Spoonflower.

Initially I didn’t have an online shop for this collection, I just sold them at in-person shows and events. I made scarves in a couple of different styles and clutch bags. I sold dozens at every in person show and made collections for some local shops including the Guthrie Theater gift shop. Over and over people asked me at those shows if I had an online shop. So I finally decided to get them all photographed and added to Etsy.

The disappointing part for me was that they were never successful in that Etsy shop. In the first year that shop was open, I sold 4 of those same scarves that I sold almost 150 of in person. Four sales spread out over a year is pretty discouraging. At that point I had been running my original Etsy shop for 13 years, so I knew all of the basics. So I tried all kinds of things to try and help out the new shop. I re-photographed everything twice, trying different ways of styling them on dress forms, on a person, or just flat.

I re-wrote my descriptions and tags to put more emphasis on the designs and describing the fabrics, hoping that if shoppers were searching for things with flamingos or moon landing or wild violets that maybe that would be more successful in search. I know from reviews that customers left that this strategy was actually somewhat successful.

I knew that it takes some time to get momentum on any online shop, so I just kept trying things and hoping that it would pick up because I knew that people loved these items. I sold out of designs at shows. I had repeat customers. I had people who came looking for me to see what designs were new. I was confident that I would figure it out. But sales online never increased.

In 2024, I put the shop on vacation because I was feeling really discouraged and I was planning to re-work everything once again. But you know how it is with projects that make you feel frustrated: they always work their way to the bottom of the to-do list. So it sat in limbo for an entire year.

When I sat down to make my goals and plans for 2025, I knew I had to do something about it and stop pushing it to the bottom of the list. So I started to make a list of what I knew from years of experience selling these items and what I could pull out from the shop stats and search info I had.

Here are some things I learned:

People love scarves. But they are impulse buys, not something you actively shop for. Every other customer at an in-person show says to me “I have so many scarves but I just have to have this one because I love it.”
No one searches online to buy a scarf. When I looked at my most favorited listing, in 6 years, only 11 people viewed it via search and only 18 clicks from Offsite Ads (which are based on search/keywords). Etsy used to have many different ways of discovering items that weren’t all based on search. That’s not true anymore so you have to be findable in search.
Photo styling didn’t seem to matter. I had both a standard and a plus sized dress form, a live model and flatlay product shots. I used white, black and coordinating colored backgrounds. None of those brought in significantly different traffic than any of the others. I rephotographed the whole collection several times so I could make the whole shop look consistent each time I tried one of the different variations.
I adjusted the prices several times as well, both raising and lowering them based on things I was seeing and hearing at in-person markets and similar items.
When Etsy started pushing free shipping, I even switched this shop over to offer free shipping (no difference).
Even though I had what I considered a successful product, I didn’t have a successful online product.
The shows where I was selling these really successfully in person were victims of the pandemic. So I was even struggling to find where my in-person audiences were shopping.

To be absolutely honest, that list was hard to make and made me feel like a little bit of a failure. There are not a lot of wins there.

I’ve started setting a theme for the year when I put together my goals for the year. I use it as kind of a guiding principle when I am deciding what to add or take off of my list and helping me decide what new projects or opportunities to tackle. For 2024, that theme was “Use what you have. Do it better.”

When I was looking at what I wanted to do for 2025, I decided that I wanted to continue that theme, but add one more element. So this year’s theme is “Use what you have. Do it better. Bring more joy.”

So with that in mind, I decided that it was time for the “Pixelated by Becka Rahn” shop to retire. I was not doing it better and it was certainly not bringing me joy, which is a little heartbreaking because I LOVE that body of work and I think it’s some of the best I’ve done.

In the spirit of “Use what you have”, I started looking for a new shop name and decided I would re-brand the shop “Captain Labradork“.

I decided that the shop already had some great reviews and some history which is super important to the Etsy search engine, so instead of starting over, I just decided to take the existing shop in a new direction. Some of the same items are still there, but I changed the focus to be dogs. If you’ve ever met me in person you’ve probably heard about my dogs. I have had several labradors and Stanley the yellow lab is the latest co-star on my Instagram feed. I make a lot of art with dogs. As I started to look at things that bring me joy, it’s my dogs. And not only them but the friends I’ve made because of them. The neighbors we walk with when we meet in the park. The students in Zoom classes that get excited when he shows up on camera.

So Captain Labradork is all my dog art. There are still scarves and clutch bags but they are the ones with dog themed fabrics. I dug through my Spoonflower designs over the years and printed some that I’ve never printed before to make some zip bags. Dogs on roller skates. Folk Art dogs. Art Deco dogs. I made some postcards. I drew a new logo, inspired by Super Grover. The colors are a brighter/bolder variation of my normal brand colors. We call Stanley “Labradork” so that makes me laugh. It fits in with my 2025 theme perfectly.

I don’t know if it’s going to be more successful than the previous collection, but I do know that people love dogs. And maybe they’ll be searching for dog themed things more than they are searching for scarves. Time will tell.

19 February, 2025

Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

beckarahn2025-02-19T11:37:22-06:00Embroidery, Tutorials|Comments Off on Preventing and Untying Knots in your Embroidery

One of the most frustrating things about hand embroidery is when your thread ties itself in knots while you are stitching. I thought I would write a couple of tips to help prevent knots and how to untie them when they happen.

Preventing Knots

After you have threaded your needle, take a few seconds to “condition the thread”. That means pinching the eye of the needle so that it doesn’t come unthreaded and then running the length of the thread through your fingers a few times while you pull on it gently. What does conditioning do? It helps to push some extra twist out of your thread. Less twist means fewer knots.

As you stitch, some stitch movements can build up extra twist in your thread, especially with stitches that wrap around themselves, like french knots or twisted chain. Keep an eye on the extra thread as you stitch. If you see it start to twist back on itself, that is a knot waiting to happen. You can let go of extra twist by picking up your work and dropping the needle, allowing the extra twist to spin the needle around and fall out of the thread. Then you can go back to stitching.

Untying Knots

The most common kind of knot to get while you are stitching is a slip knot. They happen when the thread starts to twist up and a loop slips through another one. When you see a knot starting, the best thing to do is stop stitching and don’t pull it tighter.

A slip knot looks like a loop with a knot at the base of it and you will see two “legs” coming out of the bottom. If you pull on one side, the knot will tighten up, but if you pull on the other side, the knot will unravel easily. It’s hard to tell which side is which by just looking at it because it’s all based on how your thread twisted, but a gentle tug on each leg will usually show you how to loosen it. If you accidentally pull it too tight and nothing is slipping loose, you can sometimes unravel it by slipping your needle into the knot part and wiggling it around a little to loosen it up and allow the threads to slip.