Hand Embroidery starts simply with a few essential stitches, one of those being the backstitch. This stitch helps to outline, add details, and ensures strong seams when you are sewing.

Backstitch

To begin a backstitch, bring your needle and thread up at 1 from the wrong side of your fabric to the front. Pull all the way through until you reach your knot. Working backwards, insert your needle tip into the fabric at 2 and come up at 3, a stitch length ahead. Pull all the way through. Continue down the line, inserting the needle behind to finish the stitch at 1 and up a stitch length ahead at 4. You want to make the stitches and the space between as even as possible. To finish, bring the needle and thread down to the wrong side and tie a knot to secure.

Backstitch Funky Highlight

For this particular fabric, I decided to let my backstitch act as a highlight beside some of the diamonds to make them stand out. Right now it’s just on its own, but I could always add embellishments to the stitches as I go along.

Next, we’ll learn how to do add something to a running or backstitch to smooth it out, which is a game changer! You’ll notice that my backstitches look pretty funky as I did them freestyle- sometimes that highlights a design and sometimes you want to add a little something to smooth out the funkiness.

Until then, keep on embroidering <3 Kate