“Dear Linen Doctor, how are fine linens hand embroidered? 
Hand embroidery is not as popular as it used to be, but it is still being done and customers still request it, particularly for table linens. The first step in the process is to draw the pattern onto tracing paper. A hand-held stitch counter is then dragged over the pattern lines to determine the number of stitches required to embroider it. The embroiderer is paid by the stitch.
A picote machine driven via foot pedal perforates the paper along the lines of the pattern. An inkpad-like “doll” saturated with ink is swiped over the paper to transfer the pattern onto the fabric below it. In Maderia, Portugal, for example, the printed fabrics, a sheet specifying colors and stitches to be used, and the embroidery threads are given to a delivery agent who farms them out to embroiderers. The embroidered pieces are returned to the factory, washed to remove the ink, and smoothed by hand using heavy, flat-faced irons.
One fancy cutwork tablecloth may take as long as eight months to complete, since only one person can work on the tablecloth at a time to ensure consistency in stitching and to eliminate puckering near the embroidery. One way to tell great embroidery work is to turn the embroidered fabric over to check the neatness and tightness of the embroidery by making sure that the back side embroidery is relatively flat compared to the top side, where it will typically be raised.
Almost all of the great hand embroidery used to be done in Madeira, but now much of it is being done in Vietnam In my opinion, that work is comparable to the European work we’ve seen for centuries. This wasn’t true of Chinese embroidery years ago, but the Vietnamese seem to have mastered the embroidery techniques required to produce quality work.
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