As a rule, natural woven fabrics are usually best for hand embroidery techniques. Choose from cotton, wool, linen or silk for your background and select the appropriate thread-count for your technique and threads you are using. Make sure you prepare the fabric properly. My go-to stitch for machine appliqué is the double blanket stitch, which takes two stitches on the horizontal and two on the vertical portion of the stitch. Some of my quilter friends have even made up a dance to demonstrate the motion that the sewing machine needle travels when making this stitch.