Hand-Sewing Stitches: Running and Backstitch

Every now and then in a sewing pattern, you're going to have to do some hand sewing. There are two very common types of hand sewing stitches in sewing patterns, and I'm gonna show you both of those today. These are the running stitch and the back stitch. The running stitch is most commonly used when you're doing some sort of basting or hand basting. And this back stitch is a little bit more of a sturdy stitch and can actually be used to hold things together, more of a construction stitch style. First one I'm gonna show you is the running stitch, that's this one here. I just have some sample pieces of fabric. And I have a hand sewing needle that is already threaded with some thread and I have a double strand of thread here to make it extra thick so you can see it better. You're not required to have a double strand of thread, you can do it with just a single strand as well. But to do a running stitch, you simply have your two pieces of fabric, depending on what it is you're sewing, they would generally be right sides together. I'm gonna take and bring my needle up from the back just because that's the easiest way to start bring it all the way through and make sure the knot that I have tied catches you don't wanna start doing your stitch and then pull and find that your knot wasn't big enough and it just comes right out. So make sure you're knot is secured in your fabric. And now we're simply going to take some stitches. You can decide how far apart you want your stitches to be or the length that your stitch is. If you're doing some basting this can be a very wide stitch, it doesn't have to be something really close together. You're going to put your needle down through the fabric, going to rock it to the side and bring it right back up. Now you want the distance between where your needle goes down and comes back up, this is the distance between your stitches. You want that to be similar to the distance of your actual stitch length. So you can see that this distance here, is about the same as my actual stitch length and going to continue doing that. Take your needle, over again about the same distance, put it down through the fabric. We're going to rock it to the side and bring it up. Now when you're doing something like basting and this doesn't have to be a super perfect stitch you don't have to worry about necessarily following a seam line. You can actually go fairly fast with it and you can load several stitches onto your needle all at the same time, just going down and up, down and up, simply running your needle through the top of that fabric. When your needle gets full up with little folds of fabric, pull your thread through. Make sure your fabric doesn't get wrinkled up, and you can see how quick and easy it can be to run a line of running stitch all the way along a piece of fabric. So again, this is our running stitch used for basting. This is a much of further apart, spaced running stitch. This one is a little bit narrower. You can do it any distance that you want but it's really quick and easy to do. Again if you're gonna baste something, if you have to hold something, just temporarily, it's a really easy stitch to do. The next one we're going to do is the back stitch. This is also a fairly quick and easy stitch but it's a little bit more sturdy. You can see that as opposed to the running stitch there is no breaks in the stitch at all. It's a consistent, solid line of thread. That's what makes it a little bit more sturdy. I'm gonna have a sample piece of fabric here and I have my needle already threaded with some thread. And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to bring my needle up again, just through the fabric. I wanna make sure my knot catches before I get started. And this time what I'm gonna to do is, why it's called a backstitch is, I'm gonna to go backwards from where my thread came up, insert my needle, I'm going to rock it to the side, bring it up through the fabric, approximately the same distance in front of the thread coming out as the needle is behind it, pull my thread through and I've done sort of half of the first stitch. Next stitch I'm going to again go back and I'm going to put the needle down right where this thread stitch ends, rock my needle to the side, go over the same distance to the other side of the thread coming out. Bring my thread up like so, you can see I'm starting to create this solid line of stitching. Just one more time again I'm gonna go back, insert my needle, right where that thread is going down into the fabric back my needle to the side, go over about the same distance, bring my needle up and I can pull it tight. And I'm going to have this nice solid line of stitching all along the top of the fabric, like so. Again, this is a much sturdier stitch, can be used for an actual construction stitch if you want to hand sew a project. The running stitch here is a little bit less sturdy, but much quicker to do, perfect for basting or getting something ready to be sewn by machine. So two quick and easy hands stitches to do. Again this is the backstitch and this is the running stitch. Give them a try.