Stitch Guide - Blanket Stitch

Blanket Stitch:
Blanket stitch takes a little bit of practice but once you have mastered it you will become addicted (or at least I have!) Lovely as a decorative stitch as well as perfect for joining layers together.

To start:
Tie a knot in your thread.
Come up through your fabric at starting point 1 and insert needle down at point 2
coming up at point 3 and ensuring that your thread is under the needle when you
pull it tight. Continue from left to right in the same way, keeping the height and
the width of your stitches  the same all the way along.

The dashes in figure a}are just to show the imaginary parallel lines you will follow with your stitches.

Great for finishing off edges or joining layers together.

Stitch Guide - Whip Stitch

I plan on posting more craft tutorials soon involving felt and hand stitching so I thought a wee stitch guide might be useful for people new to hand sewing. I found it quite hard to explain some of the stitches - I was trying not to make it too complicated! Hopefully my drawings will help. I will create a Stitch Guide page which I will be slowly adding to. Today we are starting with......

Whip Stitch:

Whip stitch is a great easy stitch to learn and it is designed to look a little ‘rustic’ so don’t worry about all the stitches being the same length or being evenly spaced - this is part of its charm. If you find blanket stitch or running stitch a bit tricky just use whip stitch instead.

To start:
Tie a knot in your thread.
Come up at starting point 1 and down at point 2, up at point 3 down at point 4 and so on.If you are whip stitching on a circle just follow the curve and start to angle the stitches as you go around. Refer diagram at top right.

Hint: Always stitch up through a single layer and down
through a double layer - that way you avoid pulling
tufts of the underneath colour through.

Stay tuned for Blanket Stitch - one of my very favourites!

Sublime Stitching is still sublime

I have just received the Sublime Stitching newsletter and am reminded how fabulous Sublime Stitching is. So many new funky patterns to hand stitch. I am loving...

Sexy Librarians

Forest Friends (of course)

And what is even more fantastic is you can now buy the patterns as a pdf download.

I am all for instant gratification and impulse buying so this is fantastic. I think I will go for Forest Friends as it also includes a great deer head too.

Or maybe.....

Camping Out I love a good caravan!

What really wanted to say is that they have a great 'how to' section with all the tips and tricks which is well worth the look. There are great tips on transferring patterns onto fabric - I never knew there was such a thing as a Transfer Pen - I will put it on my shopping list.