Stem stitch (or outline stitch) is an amazingly versatile stitch. You can use it to outline designs as in the peasant girl stitchery picture. In multiple colors like this one, a design will pop.This stitch is also the basis for traditional “red work” embroidery, where an entire picture is stitched in red (or blue) thread.… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Tutorials – Stitch
Basic Embroidery Stitches – Back Stitch
Back stitch is another straight stitch variant. Instead of a dotted line, it creates a filled in line. In fact, it can look a lot like double running stitch, but the solid line is created in one pass of the needle! By varying your stitch length, you can work this line around curves, making great… Continue Reading
Basic Embroidery Stitches – Running Stitch
The first basic stitch we’ll look at is the running stitch. This is, simply a series of straight stitches strung together to form a dotted or dashed line. Once your line is created, you can stitch back the way you came, filling in the gaps. This is called Double Running Stitch. So for this first… Continue Reading
Basic Embroidery Stitches – Introduction
A few months ago I made a controversial statement to my local EGA chapter while I was teaching: there are only 3 embroidery stitches, and everything else is a variation of these. The three stitches are: Straight Stitch – Up from the back of the fabric and back down into it to the back. Looped… Continue Reading
Free Beginning Hand Embroidery Class
Tomorrow I am beginning a free beginning embroidery class. This class will help if you’ve ever wanted to learn embroidery stitches that don’t rely on counting threads – escape aïda! We’ll go over the basic stitches, one per week, with video and a blog post. The video will be basic practice and stitch examples, for… Continue Reading