Coming to the last days of the 7 days of embroidery stitches with the: Straight stitch. Straight stitches are THE stitch. It's like a line you draw with a pencil - you can make anything with it. Depending on how you arrange them, how long you make them or how short, the straight stitch can be everything you want it to be.
How to do the straight stitch
1// Stick the needle where you want your stitch to end.
2// Go up where you want the next stitch to be and repeat step 1. Yup, it's that easy. I told you so.
Straight stitches......
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On to the 6th day with: couching! Couching is one of the techniques that get overlooked easily. For couching a surface material is attached to the fabric with a thread. The surface material can be anything! Dried flower stems, feathers, metallic threads or wire, wooden sticks, thick/thin/loopy/fluffy yarn or simple embroidery floss. Usually, the surface material is a little bit thicker than the working thread. This way the surface material is the star of the show. If you are using stranded embroidery floss just use one or two strands less for the working thread.
How to do couching
1// Place the surface material on your fabric. If you want to make a complex structure it might be helpful to attach it before couching. Use pins or make a few stitches to hold it in place and......
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It's already day 5 - time is flying by.... which leads me to the next stitch: the FLY STITCH. This embroidery stitch can be used as a detached stitch for scales, flying birds in the distance and other things with a half circle/oval shape. The connected version is great for twigs or flower stems with tiny leaves. I like to use it for branches of fir in Christmas embroideries.
How to embroider the fly stitch
1// Imagine a triangle pointing downwards. Stick the needle in at the upper right corner, then pull it out at the bottom point. Make sure the thread is under the needle tip before you pull the needle through.
2// Fixate the loop by sticking......
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It's time for the 4th part of the 7 days of stitches series introducing the stitch with the 4 corners *drum roll*: the CROSS STITCH. I mean, this stitch is probably the one stitch that almost everybody has stitched once in their life at school. It is also the term many people say when they actually mean embroidery.
Interestingly there is often a distinction made between counted cross stitch and embroidery in general. Counted cross stitch is when you follow a chart of squares to make each stitch. It is similar to pixel art - there are really pixelated pictures like old game boy pixels and high-resolution pictures with thousands of pixels/stitches involved that look very realistic.
Cross stitches can be used outside of counted embroidery, too. That is why I show you two ways of making them. The first steps show a stand alone cross stitch. The second set of steps......
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3 day of the 7 days of stitches features a stitch that is experiencing a revival during the last years: NEEDLE WEAVING. Being a cross over between embroidery and weaving, this stitch offers a lot of variations in how you can weave the threads in. I have picked the most basic one to show you the process - the weave stitch. Further below you can see the most popular version - the woven spider wheel - which is used for stitching roses a lot and is very easy to make. I show two different ways for the weave stitch here. One is more like weaving and the thread that is applied is not attached at the sides. For the other way to make the weave stitch, all stitches are attached to the fabric.
How to do needle weaving
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Day 2 of the 7 days of stitches has arrived and it's all about the FEATHER STITCH. This stitch has a long tradition in plant embroidery. It's so easy to mimic different twigs, leaves or even algae with this marvelous embroidery stitch.
How to do the feather stitch
1// Imagine a triangle that is pointing down. Stick the needle in the upper right corner and pull it out at the bottom point. Make sure the thread is under the needle tip before you pull the needle through.
2// Repeat the first step, but this time use the point where the thread comes out of the fabric from the previous stitch as a starting point.
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Let's start off the series with the BLANKET STITCH. This embroidery stitch is often used for hemming blanket edges. Maybe you have/had a baby blanket that was hemmed this way, too?
How to embroider the blanket stitch
1// Imagine two parallel lines. Then think of each stitch as a rectangle. Start in the top left corner, stick the needle in the bottom right corner and pull the needle up in the top right corner of this imaginative rectangle. Make sure the thread is laying under the needle tip before you pull out the needle.
2// Repeat the first step until you have the desired amount of stitches.
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7 days of embroidery stitches part 2
Hello, fellow embroidery enthusiast! This week is all about embroidery stitches. Each day I'll show you how to make a particular stitch for you to try out and use. If you want to check out the first series, it is over here.The schedule
Monday: blanket stitch
Tuesday: feather stitch
Wednesday: needle weaving
Thursday: cross stitch
Friday: fly stitch
Saturday: couching
Sunday: straight stitch
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Remember the 7 days of stitches blog series? Every day for an entire week, I showed you one embroidery stitch in detail - how it is done, what you can use it for and inspiration on how to use it in your embroidery. As you know, there are many more than 7 embroidery stitches around. So I thought it's time to make a part 2 of the 7 days of stitches! Only this time, it's time to get your embroidery needles out! During the next 14 days, I challenge you to use the embroidery stitch of the day to make a stitch sampler. Not any stitch sampler - a labyrinth sampler!
The labyrinth challenge
Sometimes the embroidery stitch world feels like a massive labyrinth to walk through without a clear path to follow. Every turn you take offers a new thing you should know or a new thing to discover. And just......Continue Reading
The herringbone stitch is a crossed stitch. It's commonly used to fill areas with a low amount of waste yarn in the back.
Here is how it's done
1 // Before making the stitch you can mark 2 parallel lines on the fabric to make it easier to keep the right spacing. Then imagine a triangle between the 2 lines with the point where the thread comes out as the left bottom corner. So now when you stick the needle in the upper line you do it just a little bit on the right of the upper corner of the triangle. Then come up just a little bit left of the upper corner of the triangle.
2 // Repeat the step above, but upside down. The triangle has it's base now......
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