 Little physical evidence survives to reconstruct the early development of English embroidery before the Norman Conquest of 1066 . Stitches reinforcing the seams of a garment in the Sutton Hoo ship burial may have been intended as decoration , and so be classed as embroidery , and fragments of a scrolling border worked in stem stitch were recovered from a grave in Kempston , Bedfordshire . Some embroidered pieces of about 850 preserved in Maaseik , Belgium , are generally assumed to be Anglo @-@ Saxon work based on their similarity to contemporary manuscript illustrations and sculptures of animals and interlace . 
