Basic Embroidery Stitches for Beginners

Hey guys, today I'm going to demonstrate how to do the following five basic embroidery stitches. Running stitch, back stitch, split stitch, stem stitch, and chain stitch. These are all super easy basic stitches that I think any embroidery artist should have in their back pocket. The first basic stitch I'm going to show you is running stitch. So running stitch can be used as kind of like an outlining stitch. It's very basic, so as always we start underneath the and we're going to do a stitch length and pull back down. And then instead of coming up close to it, we're going to leave a gap and do another stitch line. So this stitch is mostly used as an outlining stitch. You can make the lines curved or straight, however you see fit. And it's called running because as you can see it's kind of similar to the lines you might see if you were tracking somebody running on a map or something like that. So really simple, just a basic outlining stitch and it's kind of up to you how long or short these stitches are going to be. So back stitch is a stitch that I use all the time when I'm embroidering. The reason I like it so much is that it creates a nice solid looking line. There's no gaps in between and it just looks really nice and clean. I use back stitch for lettering, outlining, filler stitches. So again we always start underneath and we'll come up and I'll do about a stitch length like that coming down. And I'm going to jump a stitch length in front and I'm going to come back down through the tail of my previous stitch. And I'm jumping a stitch length forward and again coming back down through the tail of my previous stitch forward. The result is that the line is all connected and looks nice and smooth. I like this for lettering because you have a lot of control and you can kind of you can make the lines shorter or longer depending on if you have sort of like a curve to go around. It's really good for outlining when you want something to look nice and clean. There you go. The next stitch is split stitch. Split stitch is similar to back stitch except that it gives a little bit more of a braided look to the stitches but it can also be used for outlining that kind of thing. So I'm just going to demonstrate that. So coming up underneath then I'll jump a stitch length and come down. Now for this one instead of jumping a stitch length apart I'm going to go about halfway and then I'm going to come down kind of in the middle of my first stitch and then again I'm not jumping a full stitch length apart and I'm coming down right in the middle and as you'll see the result is a nice sort of braided texture. Now I find with split stitch in order to achieve more texture you want to use more floss. So I'm using all six strands right now because I wanted to really show you guys that nice braided texture but I find if you're just using like two or three strands of floss sometimes that texture can be lost a little bit on this stitch. This one also looks a bit like chain stitch you'll see but kind of a more tighter more compressed version of that and again this just it's for nice texture you can use it as an outlining stitch you can use it as a filler stitch you might use it for hair if you were trying to do like a braided look this would be a great option for that. So the next stitch I'm going to demonstrate is stem stitch. Now stem stitch as you might imagine can be used for plants curvy lines again it's a good outline stitch it kind of gives a nice ropey type texture so again we're starting from underneath the fabric and coming up and we're going about a stitch length and pulling down now instead of pulling all the way down you're going to come back up and you still have a little bit of a loop here halfway and then pull through and then I'm going to jump another stitch length pull down and when I'm at about this point where I still have a bit of a loop I'm coming up halfway and then I'm pulling through jumping a stitch length apart coming up halfway and pulling it through and as a result you can kind of start seeing a nice sort of twisty look for myself I find that I use back stitch more even when I'm doing like a stem on a flower but this is also a nice effect totally up to you it's just nice to know how to do these stitches so that when you're working on your projects if you have a certain texture you want to achieve you can say oh I think I'll use split stitch for that or stem stitch this one's a little more hands-on as you can see but it's super easy once you get the hang of it pull through something and in order to maintain consistency with any of these stitches that we've been doing you want to try to have the same length stitches to the best of your ability anyway and I'll just finish it off like that so the last stitch I'm going to teach you is chain stitch out of the group it's probably the most challenging but never fear because after you watch this I'm sure you'll be able to get it no problem so we're coming up through the bottom of the floss we're going to come down the same hole or right next to it and then when we have a loop about this size we're going to jump our stitch length apart or away and come up and when I'm coming up I'm going to go through that loop like this okay and then we're going to go back down and when we have a loop about that size jumping forward going through and pulling you don't want to pull too too hard on this one because you don't want to sort of lose that nice chain look so down jumping a stitch like that back down this one that sort of requires two hands well not sort of definitely and sometimes like this you can kind of get a little lost in your loop but just try to straighten it out before and you should be able to get back on track going down got my loop there I'm just going to even do that and you'll get faster and faster at it as you develop your technique you may recognize this kind of technique for if you've ever done a lazy daisy kind of done the same way and that's to create flower petals just go really nice and slow with this take your time and to end it just do sort of one little anchoring stitch to lock it in place