The question comes up often in private messages: "Can't I just buy the thread and fabric separately?" The short answer: yes, technically. The honest answer: it really depends where you're at.
What you need to gather when you buy everything separately
To embroider, you need: an embroidery hoop (15 cm to start), suitable cotton fabric, stranded cotton thread, an embroidery needle, a pattern to transfer onto the fabric, and fine scissors.
At a haberdashery or online, all of that costs under 20 euros. It's affordable.
But here's what the list doesn't tell you: exactly what type of fabric? What weight of cotton? Which threads, in which colours, and how much of each? What needle size for which thread? And how do you transfer the pattern onto the fabric?
These aren't impossible questions. But they're questions nobody asks before they're already a little bit in the thick of it.
The real problem: not the price, the list
What I see most often with beginners who want to buy their materials separately isn't that they overspend. It's that they get discouraged before even picking up a needle.
They arrive at the haberdashery, see ten different types of thread, and don't know which to choose. They go home with something unsuitable, or leave empty-handed. And the urge to embroider stays on hold, somewhere between two errands.
That's why the kit exists. Not to oversimplify things, but to remove that first hurdle — the one that has nothing to do with embroidery itself.
What a kit really gives you
A well-designed embroidery kit is more than a shopping list prepared for you. It's a set thought through as a whole.
But even before you embroider, there's the buying experience. No haberdashery aisles to comb through looking for the right section, no browser tabs to juggle between different online shops, no risk of forgetting the needle or ordering the wrong thread. Everything is gathered into one order, in one box.
And that box matters. Faïença kits arrive in a magnetic box: cotton fabric with the pattern printed on it, threads neatly organised, the 15 cm hoop, and the stitch booklet with step-by-step instructions. Everything has its place. You open it, and you're ready.
That's part of the desire to begin too: not just having the materials, but having them in front of you, beautiful and organised, with the feeling that someone has already thought of everything.
When loose materials make sense
Buying separately becomes worthwhile once you've already embroidered before. When you know what fabric you like, when you have your favourite thread brands, when you want to explore freely without following a specific pattern.
It also makes sense if you already have some of the materials at home — a hoop lying around, threads left over from another project. In that case, Faïença patterns are available as PDFs, ready to print, without having to rebuy what you already own.
In short
If you're a beginner and want to get started without worrying about logistics, the kit is for you. If you already have experience and materials, the PDF will give you more freedom.
There's no right or wrong answer. There's just whatever lets you embroider today, rather than still thinking about it next week.
