Session 5: Running Stitch & Back Stitch

All right, we're ready to start working on specific stitches. Now, one thing that I need to tell you about, is how to separate your floss. So if you look at the end of any form of embroidery floss, you'll see that there are six different strands in there, and you can pull 'em apart, and look at them. Now, if you were to pull from here, which would be fine, but it will not up as you go. So what I like to do, is pick about the midway point, and use your fingernails to pull it apart. I use three strands of floss, in general, whenever I'm doing a specific form, whenever I'm doing hand embroidery. If you're doing something that's on a really delicate fabric, you might use less than three, you might use two or one, or if you were doing something on a thick fabric, you might use more than three, say four or five or six. So, take it from the middle, and pull apart from there. As it pulls, try to keep those edges separate, and, one obviously came apart, nicely. This side just needs to be pulled down a little bit, and it pulls apart. Don't be afraid to use your mouth to catch it, and just hold on to it while it's pulling apart. It's a little bit animalistic, but it might help. So, then I'm gonna take my needle, get it threaded. Let you know, we did this earlier, so we know exactly what we're doing, we propped our needle onto the diamond shape, we put our floss through, and then, holding the actual wire, I'm gonna slide that on. Now you wanna pull that until it's about half the length of your floss, and as for what length of floss you wanna use, that all depends on how much stitching you have to do. So if you're only gonna do a little bit of stitching, you don't need a lot of floss. You could probably use, you know, maybe about, here, and have it doubled over so you can pull it along. But if you're going to do a lot of stitching in that same color, the longest you want to go is you want to pull it out to here, cause that's your arm length, and if it's much longer than that, you pull up, and then you have to pull some more, and it's a little bit tricky. So, always work your arm length or less. So, we have our finished, we have our threaded needle, and we have our little sampler. So, you can see, I've already gone ahead and done the running stitch. Um, sometimes, what I'll do is I'll take a removable fabric marker, and make straight lines for myself, so that I know exactly where to do my stitches. But we'll just wing it, and try to make 'em extra straight today. So I'm going to bring my needle up from the wrong side of the fabric. Make sure on the back here that you leave a one and a half to two inch tail, and then, you're gonna prop it down, like so. On the wrong side, wrap that around as we just did, and go. And now with the running stitch, this is a pretty basic stitch. It's gonna be maybe an outline stitch, or a, um, if you want to do it, this is a little like a sashiko stitch, so, there again, I've just tucked it under the fabric and brought it back up, and my goal is to create, um, similar sized stitches, and as we're just starting out, I'm hoping to tuck it underneath on the wrong side, as we did in the starting out stitches portion session of this class, so take a look at that, so there you can, again, you can see I just pop the needle up. Don't get it looped over my hoop, and, it goes right through. Now, a few things that might help as you're stitching, is when you are pulling the thread through your fabric, put your thumb right over where the thread goes into the fabric and try to keep the two points of floss separate, so this is the floss that's already secured, and this is the floss that's going in. So I pull those apart, you can put your thumb and your finger over it, as it slides in, and that's gonna actually keep it from nodding up on you as you work. If you're having a lot of trouble with it nodding up as you work, you can always add a little wax to your floss, and that'll keep it nice and smooth. But one more time, I'm just tucking it in, up and under, as I go. I'm not putting my finger over so you can see what I'm doing as I work, but in general, that is a good idea. So that's the running stitch, it's pretty basic stitch, you're probably gonna use it to outline, or if you wanted to have a lot of decorative stitches in a row, like I've done here, that's fine. Now, normally you wouldn't wanna jump over a section of embroidery and leave a big, a big section over it, as I am about to do. Uh, don't do this, actually cut it off, and finish your stitches and then get started a new. So we're gonna come over here to the back stitch, stitch section. You can see the difference between the two, the back stitch is a solid line, whereas the running stitch is a dotted line. Uh, so, we will hop over right here, a little higher up. So, where you start this stitch is going to be the midway point of the first stitch. So, if I wanted this line of stitches to begin a little lower, I've put my needle in the exact position. You do not bring your needle up exactly where you want the first stitch to begin, you bring it up where you want the first stitch to end. So, bring it up there. And then, you go back to where you want the stitch to begin, and prop it in, and then one stitch link further down. You're gonna bring it up to the right side of the fabric, so you can see there, I have the first stitch, where, well, the end of the first stitch, where it props up in the beginning of the, or the end of the second stitch. And actually, I'm going to just pull that right through, linked in how much I have, and then you just keep going from there. So you're going to put your needle into where that stitch ends, and bring it up for the next stitch. So, the reason it's called the back stitch, is that you're working on the stitch, behind, then when you're making, so you're completing one stitch, as you go. And you can see again, so this is always in the middle, and we're puncturing right where that stitch ended, and we're coming out in a new, fresh spot. Again, here's a good time to use your removable fabric marker to make a nice line for yourself. And, there you go, so that's, that's the back stitch, you can keep doing it, there's a lot of different, fancy variations. Um, I've seen people finish their back stitches, and then take a different color of thread, and kind of just loop under and over and under and over, so that these little like frills of loops come out of it. That's a fun way to do it. Um, you can find a lot of different ways to do it, but, in general, I use this when I put any wording on anything, or if I need to outline it. And you'll see on your sampler pattern, all the boxes are bordered with either back stitches, or running stitches. And the dotted lines indicate a running stitch, and the solid lines indicate a back stitch. So when you're working on that, that's where you're gonna use it on your sampler. So you can see I've got a nice little, chain of stitches there, that I've worked out for you, so you can see how to do our back stitch, and our running stitch. And now we're gonna move on to the next stitch, so get ready, it's coming up next.