Session 11: Satin Stitch & Brick Stitch

Now, for our last two stitches that we're gonna learn, we're going to enjoy the satin stitch and the brick stitch. They're basically variations of each other, or rather the brick stitch is a variation of the satin stitch. A satin stich you may be aware of because you might've made one on your machine, where you just take a zigzag and you make it really skinny together, or maybe wide, or whatever length you want. And it creates a solid fill line. So, to make a satin stitch as a embroiderer, you want to bring your... so I've drawn two lines together, as you may have noticed. I'm gonna bring my needle up, kind of at the base of where those stitches were going, and we're gonna kind of work with it this way, sideways. So you're going to insert your needle right at the top line, and bring it down at the bottom line. Maybe. Yes, I think we shall, excellent. Okay, but you don't need to keep the floss underneath your stitch. So unlike the blanket stitch, you're actually just doing these stitches close together. And then we just bring it up again. So, you go in at the top line, and out at the bottom line, and the floss should be over your needle. It should not be under it. 'Cause if you catch it, you're making a blanket stitch. And maybe it's a very narrow blanket stitch, but that's, you know, that's not the same thing. So we're gonna go in, come up, make sure that floss is over top. There you go. You're kind of getting the gist of this. Now, I like to keep mine nice and neat. You can see they're kind of coming in variations. It's 'cause normally when I do my cross stitch, it's up close to my face like this, but I'll keep it down low for you, so that it's easier for you to see. Though I suppose that's probably a bad habit. I shouldn't hold it that close to my face. So again, my floss is over my needle. I have it coming in at one line and out at the other, et cetera. When you're finished with your stitches, you're just gonna pull it up to right next to where that last stitch was to complete. And this is an easy one to actually finish off. 'Cause you'll just bring it back, the back is gonna look exactly the same as the front, bring it up and you kind of weave it through these flosses right here, or these stitches right here. You can work your way back if you want, then snip that thread, and you're finished with your satin stitches. Now let's talk about the brick stitch. The brick stitch is actually a variation of the satin stitch, where instead of just doing all your stitches in the same row, you're doing one short stitch, one long stitch, one short stitch, one long stitch. And then that's the first row. So you have these short stitches then long stitches. The second row, what you're going to do is you're going to do one long switch that goes from row number two down to number three, and then you're going to pick it up and you're going to go row number two to four and you're gonna go three to five. So let me show you how that works. So on this one, our first stitch it goes one to two. If you numbered these little horizontal lines. So this would be row one, This would be row two, three, four, five, et cetera. So on the upper one, we'd go row one to two for that first stitch, and then one to three, and then one to two, and then one to three. So that it creates sort of a short stitch and a long stitch. But when we're ready to do our brick stitch with our next color, and that's kind of the idea with this, is that you're filling in a block with different colors. You could do something that looks ombred and have like a dark blue, a light blue, a medium, or a dark blue, a medium blue, a light blue, and it would look really fun and textural. It feels great when you do it, and you touch it afterwards. It's just kind of raised up off, and all those stitches together. So this stitch went in you can see my last stitch was here on, on row four. So that means my needle is going to come up at the base of this long green stitch here. You're gonna want to make sure that you come right up at that spot. And then this stitch should go down from row three to row five. So I'm gonna pull it straight, so that I know kind of where to put my floss, or my needle, I should say, based on where my floss is. So you can see, I put my needle in there and then I'm gonna come up at the base of the next green stitch, which is right, I might be able to find it. It's very thick back there with many stitches. So you see I'm coming up at the very next stitch, which is right there. And I'm gonna pull that through, and you want to make sure your needle isn't catching the floss. Nothing's over top. Make sure it doesn't tie a knot as it goes. There we go. And that's the next stitch and the line. So then this stint, which comes up at row two, right here we'll go down at row four. So once you get that first row done, your stitches are sort of two rows long. So I'm gonna pull my floss and see where it should go. It should go right here, ish. And then this stitch is very short because it's just gonna come up at the base of the next stitch from the first sets of rows. So you can see I'm coming up right there. It's not a very long stitch in comparison to the other stitches. We pull that through. And then that stitch is going to go all the way down to five. And this is just a fun way to complete your stitches as you work, that makes it look different than what you're gonna find anywhere else. I mean, very few off the rack companies are ever gonna decorate their fabric with the brick stitch, you know? because it's kind of hard to do, and it's pretty labor intensive, but it looks really cool. You can embrace how textural it is, and it's kind of geometric. You could fill any size shape with it, though it is easier to do squares or rectangles. I highly recommend the brick stitch. I like it. I think it looks good. And there is a section of our sampler with it, of course, as there are with any of the other stitches. So I'm just kind of doing a few stitches here. When you come up here you're gonna go down kind of, not quite as low. And then you do a short stitch. So it's sort of a short stitch, a long stitch, wherever you start from. Then, if we were finished, we had completed this whole row, then we would just put our needle in wherever it goes next, and that would pull it over to the side and you can tuck it underneath those fo those stitches right there. And it would secure it and keep it nice and neat for years to come as you enjoy your sampler or whatever it is you're doing your brick stitch on. And those are all of the stitches I'm gonna teach you. We've gone over 14 different stitches, and I hope you've enjoyed them. I'm going to take a moment to get set up so I can show you how to finish off any embroidery project you're working on. And then some inspiring projects that will get you itching to stitch. Stay tuned.