Unit 9: Embroidery Basics

Setting the Fabric Drum-Tight in the Hoop

Our Lord's picture of the house that stood through the storm turns on one thing only: what it was built upon. Embroidery is the same. Every stitch you will make in the coming weeks rests on how well the cloth is held. Get the foundation right and ordinary stitches look fine. Get it wrong and even careful stitching sags, puckers, and disappoints you. So we begin at the bottom.

Which hoop, and why

Three kinds of hoop are in common use. The screw tension hoop is the standard: two rings, the outer one split and closed by a screw, usually with a slotted head you can turn with a small screwdriver. It is the only type that lets you adjust tension as you work, which is why nearly every experienced hand keeps a shelf of them. The spring tension hoop has a rigid outer ring with a groove and a sprung metal inner ring with a bulky handle; it snaps in quickly and is pleasant for fast work, but the tension is whatever the spring gives you and nothing more. Flexi hoops pair a rigid inner ring with a flexible outer ring pushed down over it; they hold well and many people leave finished work displayed in them, but again you cannot dial the tension up or down.

Hoops run from 3 inches to 14 inches across. A 6-inch hoop is the sensible first purchase. It holds a useful area of a design without forcing you to move the hoop constantly, and it still sits comfortably in the curve of your hand for an hour of stitching. Very large hoops are heavy and tire the wrist; very small ones send you re-hooping every few minutes, and every re-hooping risks crushing stitches you already made.

Hooping, step by step

Loosen the screw until the inner ring drops through the outer ring with a little room to spare. Lay the outer ring on the table. Put your fabric over it, right side up, with the area you plan to stitch centered. Press the inner ring down inside, working around the circle with your palms rather than shoving one edge down first. Now tighten the screw a few turns and begin tugging gently at the fabric edges, working around the hoop like the face of a clock: pull a little at twelve, then six, then three, then nine, then the points between. Tighten the screw a little more, tug again, and stop.

Pull on the straight grain, not on the diagonal. The bias will stretch, and a shape stretched on the bias springs back crooked once you release it.

Reading the tension by ear and eye

Tap the middle of the hooped cloth with a fingertip. It should answer with a small hollow sound, like a drum. That is the target, and it is the reason the word drum-tight has stuck. Then look at the weave. The crosswise and lengthwise threads should still cross each other at square corners. If the little squares of the weave have gone rectangular, or if the printed pattern of the cloth looks stretched taller than it does off the hoop, you have gone too far.

Too loose is the more common fault, and it shows up underneath: the cloth lifts with the needle instead of resisting it, and thread piles into loose nests on the back. Too tight has its own signs. The floss abrades and breaks, and when you finally take the work out of the hoop the fabric relaxes and every stitched area rises in a pucker, because the stitches were laid into a stretched cloth and the cloth has now shrunk back around them.

Hoop marks and how to avoid them

Take the work out of the hoop whenever you set it down for the evening. Cloth left hooped for days takes a permanent ring-shaped crease along the line of the rings, and on linen it can be nearly impossible to press out. If you are stitching a piece much larger than the hoop, so that the rings sit over an area you will never cover with stitching, this matters even more.

One further help: wrap the inner ring with a narrow strip of cotton twill tape or torn muslin, overlapping as you go, and stitch the end down. The padded ring grips slippery or fine fabric far better, holds tension longer between adjustments, and spreads the pressure so the crease is softer.

Before you stitch a single line, hoop a scrap and test yourself: tap it, look at the weave, and decide honestly whether it is right.

Matching the Needle to the Floss

A just weight is simply a weight that tells the truth about what it measures. Scripture treats an honest match between two things as something God delights in, and though Solomon was writing about the marketplace, the habit of mind carries into the workroom. A needle that honestly matches its thread makes stitching easy. A mismatched one fights you at every pull, and no amount of patience will make up for it.

How embroidery needles are numbered

Embroidery needle sizes run from 1 to 10, and the numbering runs backward from what you would guess: size 1 is the largest, size 10 the smallest. Higher number, finer needle. Keep that fixed in your mind, because a package of size 10s bought in the hope of something sturdy will disappoint you.

The working rule is short and worth memorizing: the shaft of the needle should be about as thick as the bundle of thread you are pulling through it. The needle's job is to open a hole in the weave just wide enough for the thread to follow without scraping. Too fine a needle drags the floss through a hole smaller than itself, and the fibers fuzz, thin, and part. Too coarse a needle punches a hole the thread cannot fill, and you are left with a visible pinprick beside every stitch.

In practice that gives you three bands. For all six strands used together, reach for sizes 1 to 3. For three or four strands, sizes 5 to 7. For fine work with one or two strands, sizes 6 to 10.

Crewel and tapestry

Two needle families cover nearly all of surface embroidery.

The crewel needle is the standard. It has a sharp point that pierces tightly woven cloth, cotton, linen, and silk alike, and a medium-length eye that takes several strands without shredding them. If someone says "embroidery needle" without qualifying it, this is what they mean, and it is what you will use for every stitch taught in this unit.

The tapestry needle is a different animal, made in sizes 13 to 28. Its tip is blunt and its eye is large. It is built for counted-thread work such as cross-stitch and needlepoint, where the needle is meant to slip between the existing threads of an even-weave ground rather than split them. Try to do surface embroidery on quilting cotton with a tapestry needle and you will spend the afternoon pushing. Try counted work with a sharp crewel needle and you will keep splitting the ground threads and pulling your careful grid crooked.

What the floss actually is

Stranded cotton embroidery floss is not one thread. A skein of DMC is six loosely twisted strands of double mercerized long-staple cotton, and each skein holds 8.7 yards. Mercerizing is a caustic soda treatment that strengthens the cotton, raises its luster, and lets it take dye deeply, which is why floss has that quiet shine and holds color so well.

The numbers are useful when you go to choose a needle. All six strands bundled together measure roughly 1.5 to 2 millimeters across. A single strand measures only about 0.25 to 0.35 millimeter. That is a difference of five or six times, and it is exactly why one needle cannot serve both.

Testing, and a word about care

Thread your needle and slide the needle alone through a scrap of your project fabric. It should pass with light, even pressure and no popping sound. Then draw a full stitch through. If the thread squeaks or you feel it catch as it clears the cloth, go up one needle size, meaning a lower number. If you see an open hole sitting beside the finished stitch, go down.

Watch the thread itself as the evening goes on. Floss that starts smooth and turns fuzzy and pale halfway along its length is being abraded, usually by too small a needle, sometimes by too long a working length. Cut fresh and correct the needle rather than fighting on.

Keep needles in a labeled case or a felt page rather than loose in a basket. A needle lost in a chair cushion or a carpet is a genuine hazard, especially where children come and go, and a needle case costs almost nothing. Discard any needle that has gone dull, burred, or bent; a rough eye will shred floss quietly for hours before you work out why.

Separating Floss and Hiding Your Thread Ends

Embroidery has a front and a back, and only the front is ever admired. Samuel was told that God's sight goes past the surface a man is looking at, and while a tidy back does not make anyone holier, the habit of doing careful work where no one is watching is worth cultivating. There is also a practical reason: a snarled, knot-studded back distorts the front, snags in the wash, and shows through pale cloth.

Stripping the strands

Cut a working length of about 18 inches. Longer than that and the tail drags through the cloth hundreds of times before it is used up, wearing itself fuzzy and thin.

Now separate the strands, even when you intend to use all six. Hold the cut length near one end and draw out a single strand straight up, slowly, letting the rest of the bundle hang and turn as it releases. Do not pull sideways; that is what causes the mass of knots people blame on the floss. Draw out each strand you need, one at a time, then lay them back together side by side and thread them as a group.

That little ritual is called stripping the floss, and it is not fussiness. Six strands pulled straight from the skein still hold the twist of the skein, so they cross over one another and lie unevenly. Strands separated and re-laid sit flat and parallel, and the finished stitch covers better and catches more light.

Starting without a knot

A knot on the back is a lump. It presses through thin fabric, it can work loose under a decade of use, and it makes the piece impossible to press flat. Three better starts:

Anchor under coming stitches. Bring the needle up a short distance ahead on the line you are about to stitch, leaving a two-inch tail on the back. Hold that tail against the back with your finger and take your first three or four stitches over it, so each one traps it. Then trim it close.

The waste knot. Knot the end and push the needle down through the front of the fabric an inch or two ahead of where you will begin, so the knot sits on top. Stitch toward it; your stitching secures the thread on the back as you go. When you reach the knot, snip it off flush and the tail is already held.

Through an existing stitch. Once an area is partly worked, slide the needle under three or four stitches on the back, snug but not tight, and begin. This is the fastest method and the one you will use most.

Ending, and burying tails

Finish the same way. Turn the work over, run the needle under the last four or five stitches on the back, give a small tug so the thread seats, and cut it about a quarter inch from the fabric. Do not cut flush; a hair of tail keeps it from creeping out. If a line is very short and there is nothing to run under, take two tiny backstitches in the same place, in a spot the stitching will later cover.

Never carry a thread more than about an inch across the back of an open, unstitched area, and never at all behind pale fabric. A dark floss traveling behind white linen shows as a gray shadow in daylight, and no amount of pressing will hide it.

When the thread misbehaves

If the thread twists on itself and starts kinking into loops, let go of the needle and let it hang free from the work for a moment. It will spin and untwist itself. Do that every dozen stitches and you will almost never fight a knot.

If a loop forms and tightens into a knot anyway, do not yank. Slip the point of the needle into the loop and coax it open from the inside; pulling only welds it.

If the last few inches of thread look pale, fuzzy, and thinner than the rest, that thread is worn out. Bury it and start fresh. Trying to squeeze the last stitches out of a used-up length is how a beautiful line ends in three shabby stitches.

Store leftover lengths on a slotted card or a bobbin with the color number written on it. Floss is inexpensive, but an hour spent guessing at a shade you cannot match is not.

Getting the Design onto the Cloth

Solomon's counsel is to do the outside preparation first and raise the house afterward. Transfer is that preparation. An hour spent getting clean, accurate lines onto the cloth saves you from stitching a wobbling stem you will have to pick out later. Nobody admires a transfer; everybody sees the result of a bad one.

Marking pens, and why you test first

Two marker types are made for this. Water-erasable pens lay down a blue line that rinses away in cool water. Heat-erasable pens leave a fine line that vanishes when an iron passes over it.

Before either touches your project, draw a short line on a scrap of the same fabric, from the same bolt if you can. Let it sit a day. Then remove it exactly as you plan to remove it later, and look at the scrap in daylight. You are checking for two things: that the mark truly leaves, and that it leaves no shadow or halo behind. Some heat-erasable inks return faintly in cold conditions, and a mark that has been pressed with a hot iron before it was rinsed can set permanently. A test scrap costs you two minutes and protects weeks of work.

Use a light hand. The pen is a guide, not a drawing; your stitches should cover it.

Tracing over light

The simplest method needs no special equipment. Tape your printed design face up on a bright window, then tape the fabric over it, straight of grain running true, and trace what shows through. A light box does the same job on a table and spares your arms. This works beautifully on white and light-colored cotton and on medium-weight linen, and it is the method to reach for first.

It fails on dark cloth, on heavy denim or wool, and on anything with a nap that swallows the pen tip. When you cannot see through the fabric, go to one of the next two.

Transfer paper and stabilizer

Transfer paper is coated on one side with a waxy pigment. Lay it pigment down between the design and the fabric, then trace the design firmly with a stylus or a spent ballpoint. The pressure prints the line onto the cloth. It handles dark fabrics well, since the pigment is opaque. It works best on flat, smooth, non-fuzzy surfaces; on a fleecy or brushed cloth the pigment sits on the fibers and smears the moment your hand rests on it.

Water-soluble stabilizer is a sheet made from polyvinyl alcohol, and it dissolves completely in cold or warm water. Many versions come with an adhesive back and take an ordinary printer, so you can print the design directly onto the sheet, peel it, smooth it onto the fabric, and stitch straight through both. Nothing is ever drawn on the fabric at all. It is the only good answer for dark, textured, or knitted grounds, and it stiffens a floppy fabric while you work. Keep the sheets dry and away from a humid room until you need them; they will begin softening on their own.

A fourth option costs nothing: trace the design onto tissue paper, baste the tissue to the fabric, stitch through paper and cloth together, then tear the paper away from the stitching with tweezers. It leaves no chemistry on your fabric at all, which is worth something on a piece intended for a baby.

Placing it square

However you transfer, place the design with the grain, not with the cut edge, which may not be straight. Find the lengthwise grain by pulling a single thread, or by folding the fabric until the selvage lies on itself and pressing that fold as your vertical reference. Center your design on that line. A wreath that sits a half inch off center on the cloth will look crooked in the frame forever, no matter how fine the stitching is.

Leave generous margins, at least two or three inches of plain fabric all around the design, so the hoop rings never sit on the stitched area and there is cloth to grip when you frame or finish the piece.

Mark first, hoop second. Trying to draw on fabric already stretched in a hoop puts your line onto a stretched surface, and it will shift when the tension comes off.

Backstitch: The Line That Holds Its Shape

A backstitched line is nothing but small faithfulnesses laid end to end. Not one of those stitches is impressive by itself, and every one of them shows. Our Lord's word about being faithful in the least thing is a spiritual principle first, but it also happens to be the whole method of this stitch: make the small unit right, again and again, and the large result takes care of itself.

Backstitch is embroidery's workhorse for outlines, lettering, and any crisp border. Of the line stitches it gives the most exact edge, which is why it is the one to learn first.

Making the stitch

Work from right to left if you are right-handed, or the reverse if you are left-handed; what matters is that you always travel the same direction along a given line.

Bring the needle up through the fabric one stitch length ahead of where the line so far ends. Then take the needle down backward, into the exact point where the previous stitch finished. That backward motion is where the name comes from. Now bring the needle up again one stitch length ahead of the stitch you just made, and repeat. Each new stitch begins ahead and reaches back to touch the one before it, so the line closes up with no gaps.

On the very first stitch there is nothing behind you to reach back to, so simply come up one stitch length along the line, go down at the starting point, then come up two lengths along and continue.

Getting the length right

For most work, aim for stitches between 2 and 3 millimeters. Shorter than that and you spend an evening on an inch of line; much longer and the stitch begins to look like a series of dashes and loses the flexibility to follow a shape.

Curves need shorter stitches. Bring them down to roughly 1.5 to 2 millimeters through a tight bend. A curve stitched at the same length as the straight sections comes out faceted, like a polygon pretending to be a circle. If you look at your finished flower stem and see corners in it, that is the diagnosis, and shorter stitches are the cure.

Lettering needs shorter stitches still, and it needs the ends of strokes squared off deliberately. Stitch the whole of one letter stroke before jumping to the next, and end each stroke exactly on the drawn line rather than a hair past it.

Keeping it even

Consistency is what separates a backstitched line that looks bought from one that looks like a first try. Uneven lengths show mercilessly in this stitch, because the eye reads the whole line at once and any long stitch jumps out.

Two habits help. First, watch the needle come up rather than watching where it goes down; the up-point is the one that sets your length. Second, do not stitch when your eyes have gone tired. Fatigue lengthens stitches before you notice, and the last ten minutes of an evening will often be the ten you pick out tomorrow.

When the line is done, look at it from arm's length and from the back. From the front you should see one continuous line of even segments with no gap and no overlap where the stitches meet. On the back you will see a longer, overlapping thread that looks a little untidy; that is normal for backstitch and not a fault.

Faults and remedies

Gaps between stitches. You went down near the previous stitch instead of into it. Come down into the same hole, not beside it.

Puckering along the line. You are pulling each stitch tight after it is set. Draw the thread until it just lies down on the surface and stop; the stitch should sit on the cloth, not sink into it.

A ridge that lifts off the fabric. Too much thread for the line. Drop from three strands to two, or move to a finer needle.

Stitches that split their neighbors. Your needle is coming down into the body of the previous stitch rather than its end hole. Either aim more carefully or, when it happens by design rather than accident, you have discovered the split stitch, which is next.

Practice a full row on scrap fabric before touching a project: draw a straight line, a gentle wave, and a tight circle, and stitch all three. The circle will teach you more in ten minutes than the straight line will in an hour.

Split Stitch for a Heavier, Softer Outline

Paul's charge not to be slothful in business is about the whole of a believer's ordinary work, and it fits a stitch like this one, which asks for steady attention rather than cleverness. Split stitch has no shortcut. It rewards the person who sits down and works the row properly, and it punishes hurry with a line that unravels its own texture.

Backstitch gives you the sharpest, thinnest line available. Split stitch gives you something different: a slightly thicker line with a soft, ropelike surface, because each stitch is anchored into the body of the one before it rather than merely touching its end.

How the stitch is formed

Begin with a single straight stitch along your drawn line, about 2 to 3 millimeters long.

Now bring the needle up from underneath through the middle of that stitch, close to its far end but not at the very tip, piercing the strands and pushing them apart. Draw the thread through. Then take the needle down along the line, 2 to 3 millimeters ahead of where you came up. You have made the second stitch, and its beginning is locked inside the first.

Repeat: up through the body of the stitch you just made, down ahead of it. Always come up from the back so the needle splits the strands cleanly from below; coming down into a stitch from above tends to drag the floss rather than divide it.

Choosing the thread for it

Use an even number of strands, most often two or four. An even count splits into equal halves and the line stays symmetrical. A single strand cannot be split at all; three strands split one against two, and the line wanders visibly to one side.

Keep the needle sharp. A crewel needle in the size that matches your strand count will pierce the previous stitch willingly. A dull or burred needle slides off the thread and comes up beside it instead of through it, and the whole texture is lost.

What it is good for

Split stitch shines wherever you want an outline with a little more presence than backstitch: the outer edge of a leaf, the trunk of a tree, heavier lettering, the border of a shape that will be filled later.

It is also the traditional foundation under satin stitch. Outline the shape in split stitch first, then work the satin stitch over that outline, carrying each satin stitch just past the split line. The result is a filled shape with a firm, slightly raised, perfectly clean edge instead of a ragged one. That single habit will improve your filled work more than any other thing in this unit.

On tightly woven or stiff cloth, where piercing the previous stitch is a fight, work the row as backstitch first and then split each stitch on a second pass. The finished look is nearly the same and your hands will thank you.

Faults and remedies

The line looks like plain running stitch. The needle is not actually splitting anything; it is coming up beside the stitch. Slow down and aim, or change to a sharper needle.

The line looks lopsided. You are using an odd number of strands, or splitting off center. Move to two or four strands and aim for the middle.

Stitches pull loose or gap. You split too near the very tip of the previous stitch, where there is not enough thread to hold. Come up a little farther back into the body.

A curve looks angular. Same cure as backstitch: shorten the stitches through the bend, down to about 1.5 to 2 millimeters, and let the many small segments describe the curve.

The line grows fuzzy as you work. The floss is being abraded by repeated piercing. Shorten your working length, and cut fresh when the thread starts to look pale and thin rather than pushing on to the end.

Practice on a scrap: draw a two-inch straight line and a two-inch curve, and work each in split stitch with two strands, then again with four. Set them beside a backstitched line of the same floss. Seeing the three weights together will tell you, better than any description, which stitch belongs on which part of your next design.

Stem Stitch and the Art of the Curve

"Broidered work" is the old English for embroidery, and Scripture speaks of it the way it speaks of fine linen and silk: as a generous, beautiful thing to clothe someone with. It is worth remembering that when you are working a vine around the corner of a pillowcase for somebody who will never know how long it took. The ornament Scripture praises here is not something a person put on to be noticed; it is something given.

Stem stitch is the stitch for anything that curves and grows. Vines, flower stems, the bend of a river on a map, the outline of a hill, hair, the flowing letters of a monogram. Backstitch is a ruler; stem stitch is a pencil.

Working the stitch

Work along the line from left to right, or bottom to top if the line runs upright.

Come up at the beginning of the line. Take the needle down about 3 to 4 millimeters ahead along the line. Before pulling the thread all the way through, bring the needle back up at the midpoint of that stitch, right beside the thread, and draw through. You now have one stitch with the needle emerging from its middle.

For the next stitch, go down 3 to 4 millimeters ahead of the far end of the first stitch, and come up again in the hole where the previous stitch ended. Each stitch overlaps the one before it by about half its length, and that overlap is what produces the smooth, twisted, rope-like line.

One rule governs the whole thing: keep the working thread on the same side of the needle for every single stitch. Held consistently below the line of stitching, the result is stem stitch. Let it stray above for a stitch or two and the line visibly stumbles, because the twist reverses. If you cannot see what went wrong in a line of stem stitch, that is nearly always the answer.

Rounding a curve

Curves are what this stitch is for, and they ask for two adjustments.

First, shorten the stitches. Bring them down to about 2 millimeters through a tight bend. Long stitches cannot bend; they cut the corner and flatten the curve into a straight run.

Second, on a tight curve keep the working thread to the outside of the curve. The stitches then fan very slightly, the outer edge stays full, and the inner edge does not bunch. Coming back around a shape where the curve reverses direction, you must change which side you are holding the thread on, and the place to make that change is at the point of the reversal, where the eye expects a change anyway.

Where a stem meets a leaf, stitch the stem first and let the leaf's outline cross over it. Where two stems cross, stop one line, work the other straight through, then resume the first on the far side. Do not try to run both over the same crossing point; it makes a lump.

Faults and remedies

The line looks like scattered dashes instead of a rope. You are not overlapping. Come up at the midpoint of the previous stitch, not at its far end.

The twist reverses partway along. The thread got onto the other side of the needle. Pick out back to the change and rework it.

The curve looks flattened or angular. Stitches too long through the bend; shorten to about 2 millimeters.

The inner edge of a curve is crowded and lumpy. You held the thread on the inside of the curve. Move it to the outside.

The line thins and looks weak. Add a strand. Stem stitch worked in one strand almost disappears; two or three strands give the line the body it wants on quilting cotton or linen.

Set yourself a curl of a design on scrap: draw a spiral about two inches across and work it from the outside in. By the time you reach the middle, where every stitch must be short and every one must curve, you will own this stitch.

Satin Stitch: Filling a Shape with Light

The garments made for Aaron were commanded to be for glory and for beauty. God did not treat beauty as an extravagance to be apologized for; He asked for it by name, in cloth, made by human hands. Satin stitch is the plainest illustration of that in all of embroidery. It exists for no purpose except to make a surface that catches light. A quilt block is warm without it. It is still worth doing.

Laying the stitches

Satin stitch is a filling stitch: close-together parallel straight stitches, laid side by side so that no fabric shows between them, covering the shape completely with a smooth, glossy face.

Outline the shape first in split stitch, as described earlier. Then begin at the widest part of the shape, not at one end. Come up on one edge, just outside your split-stitch outline, carry the thread straight across the shape, and go down just outside the outline on the far side. Come up again immediately beside your first stitch, close enough that the two touch but not so close that they crowd and ride over each other.

Work from the middle outward to one end, then return to the middle, turn the hoop, and fill the other half. Starting in the middle protects the widest, most visible part of the shape from the wobble that afflicts the first few stitches of any row.

Decide your angle before the first stitch and hold it. A leaf usually looks best filled at a slant, running from the center vein out toward the edge, because the slant makes the leaf read as a leaf. A letter or a solid dot is filled straight across. What ruins a fill is not a steep angle or a shallow one; it is an angle that drifts.

Keep the shapes small

Satin stitch loses control as the span grows. Long stitches sag, snag on buttons and fingernails, and lie unevenly because there is nothing holding their middles down.

So divide. A wide petal becomes two or three sections, split along a line that the design can justify: a vein, a fold, the edge of a highlight. Work each section as its own small fill, and let the join fall where the eye already expects a line. A large area that must be one continuous surface is a job for long and short stitch, which is next, not for satin stitch stretched past what it can do.

Making it lie flat

Use two or three strands rather than six. Fewer strands lie flatter and cover more evenly, and you can always work a second pass over the first for depth.

Strip and re-lay your strands, as you learned earlier, so they run parallel rather than twisted around each other. Then, as you draw each stitch down, keep it flat with the tip of a spare needle or your thumbnail so the strands stay side by side on the surface. A stitch whose strands have rolled into a cord shows up as a dark line running through the shine, and once a row of them is in, nothing fixes it but picking out.

Faults and remedies

Fabric showing between stitches. Your stitches are too far apart. Bring each new one right up against its neighbor; on a curved shape the outer edge needs stitches placed closer than instinct suggests, and it often needs an occasional short wedge stitch worked in from the outer edge only.

A ragged edge. You are not going down consistently just outside the split-stitch outline. The outline is your guide; every stitch must clear it by the same hair.

Puckering. Stitches drawn too tight, or a hoop that was overstretched when you started. Let the thread lie on the surface and stop pulling.

A dull, streaky surface. Twisted strands. Strip the floss and flatten each stitch as it goes down.

The middle of a long stitch lifts when brushed. The span was too great. Subdivide the shape and work it again.

Practice on a scrap with three shapes: a circle about half an inch across, a narrow leaf, and a capital letter. The circle will teach you edge placement, the leaf will teach you angle, and the letter will teach you patience.

Long and Short Stitch for Shading and Blended Color

When the tabernacle was to be built, God named the man who would do the skilled work and said He had filled him with His Spirit in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and all manner of workmanship. Craft skill is not treated in Scripture as a lesser gift than teaching or preaching. It is called a filling of the Spirit. That should steady you as you take up the hardest stitch in this unit, because long and short stitch takes real practice and there is no way around the practicing.

Satin stitch fills a small shape with one flat color. Long and short stitch fills a large one, and lets the color change gradually across it. It is also called brick stitch, from the staggered pattern the stitch ends make.

The first row sets everything

Outline the shape in split stitch as before, then work the first row along the edge you want to look most finished, usually the outer edge of a petal or leaf.

In this first row only, alternate a long stitch and a short one: long, short, long, short, all beginning together on the outline edge but ending at two different depths into the shape. Make the long ones roughly twice the depth of the short ones. That ragged inner boundary is the whole point; it is what lets the next color slip in among the ends of this one instead of meeting it at a hard line.

All the stitches must aim at the same target. On a petal, that target is the point where the petal joins the flower's center. Draw two or three faint guide lines radiating toward that point before you begin, and angle every stitch along them. Without guide lines, the angle drifts as you round a curve and the finished petal looks warped.

Rows after the first

From the second row on, stop alternating. Work all the stitches at roughly the same length, and let the staggered ends of the row above create the brickwork for you.

Bring each new stitch up through the end of a stitch in the row above, splitting it, rather than beside it. That single habit is the difference between shading and stripes. Where the two colors interlock by piercing one another, the eye reads a gradual change; where they merely butt together, it reads a seam.

Change color between rows, not within them, and change gradually. Three shades of one color, worked light to dark or dark to light across a petal, give a convincing depth. Skipping straight from a pale shade to a very dark one leaves a band no amount of blending will soften.

End the last row at the inner edge of the shape, where a stem, a center of French knots, or another shape's outline will cover the finish.

Faults and remedies

The fill reads as visible stripes. Your rows are too even, or you are coming up beside the stitches above instead of through them. Split the ends, and let the lengths within a row vary slightly by a millimeter or so rather than measuring them.

A gap or a shadow line between rows. New stitches are starting below the ends of the row above. They must begin inside that row, overlapping it.

The shading looks muddy. Too many shades used across too small an area, or shades too close to tell apart. Three well-chosen values in a petal an inch long is plenty.

The stitch direction fans out wrong on a curve. No guide lines. Mark them and rework.

Thin patches near the outer edge. On a curved edge the stitches spread apart as they go inward; you need to add occasional extra short stitches at the edge to keep coverage full.

Practicing it honestly

Work a single leaf about two inches long in three greens: the outer row in the lightest, the middle in the medium, the last in the darkest, all angled toward the base of the leaf. Stand it up across the room and look at it. Then work a second one. Almost nobody's first is good, and almost everybody's third is respectable. This is a stitch you learn with your hands, and the hours you give it are not wasted time; they are the ordinary cost of workmanship.

French Knots, and Finishing the Piece Well

Work done heartily, as to the Lord, does not stop when the interesting part is over. The last hour of a piece is the one nobody enjoys: rinsing marks, pressing, trimming, easing out a hoop crease. It is also the hour that decides whether the finished thing looks like something made or something merely attempted. Give it the same care you gave the stitching.

But first, one stitch remains, and it is the one that will make people pick up your work and look closely.

The French knot

A French knot is a small bead of thread that sits on the surface of the fabric. It is used for the centers of flowers, the eyes of an animal, scattered dots on a background, the texture of gravel or blossom.

Bring the needle up where you want the knot. With your free hand, hold the thread out taut, a few inches from the fabric. Lay the needle against the taut thread and wrap the thread around the shaft two or three times. Two wraps gives a small knot, three a slightly fuller one.

Now, still holding the working thread taut with your free hand, turn the needle and put its point down into the fabric close beside where it came up, a thread or two away, but never back into the same hole. Slide the wraps down the needle so they sit snugly on the fabric at the base of the needle, keep the tension on with your free hand until the last moment, and draw the needle through slowly and steadily. The knot seats itself on the surface.

Why yours are failing

The knot vanishes through to the back. You put the needle down into the exact hole it came out of. Move over by a thread's width.

The knot is loose and shapeless. You let go of the working thread too early. That tension is what holds the wraps closed while the needle passes through. Keep it until the thread is nearly all pulled.

The knot is a tangled mess rather than a bead. Too many wraps. More than three wraps on the shaft will not stack neatly. To make a bigger knot, do not add wraps; add strands. Six strands with two wraps gives a fat, tidy knot; two strands with six wraps gives a snarl.

The thread jams halfway through. The wraps tightened above the fabric instead of sliding down. Push them down to the fabric before you pull.

Scatter a dozen on a scrap before you commit them to a project. They come suddenly, all at once, the way riding a bicycle does.

Finishing

When the last stitch is buried, take the work out of the hoop and deal with the marks first, before any heat touches the cloth. Rinse water-erasable lines out in cool water and let the piece dry flat; a hot iron passed over a blue line can set it beyond recovery. Heat-erasable lines go with the iron, but test on your scrap again if the piece is precious.

Press face down. Lay a thick, clean bath towel on the ironing board, put the embroidery face down onto it, and press from the back. The towel lets the stitches sink into it instead of being flattened, so satin fills keep their shine and French knots keep their shape. Press with the iron set for the fabric, moving it rather than resting it, and never rest a hot iron on the stitching itself. Keep the cord well back from the edge of the board and the iron on its heel between passes, especially if children come through the room.

A hoop crease usually relaxes with a light misting of water and a press from the back on the towel. Stubborn creases in linen may need the whole piece damp-pressed.

Trim the edges square to the grain, leaving at least two inches all around if the piece will be framed or mounted. If it will be laundered as part of a garment or a pillowcase, finish the raw edges and wash it gently by hand the first time; good cotton floss is colorfast, but a hand wash the first time is cheap insurance on hours of work.

Then give it away, if that is what it was made for. Handwork that never leaves the drawer has only done half of what it could.