Any time you want an area of solid stitching in embroidery, you use what’s called a fill stitch. I usually recommend satin stitch for beginners, but that only works for smallish areas, and it has a very particular smooth texture that might not be the look you’re after.
There are thousands of available embroidery stitches – these are just the ones I use in my own work, and that I recommend in my patterns.
Here are all my lessons for fill stitches (besides satin stitch).
Any line in an embroidery pattern can be stitched with any outline stitch. I usually recommend backstitch for beginners, but beyond that you can choose anything you like.
There are thousands of available embroidery stitches – these are just the ones I use in my own work, and that I recommend in my patterns.
Here are all my lessons for outline embroidery stitches.
Regardless of what the instructions say, you can embroider almost any design using just four super simple stitches. You need something for lines, something for dots, something for drop shapes, and something to fill in solid areas.
Here are my lessons for the four most basic embroidery stitches I recommend for beginners.
Before you knot that thread you need to know how much to use, so here’s one more post that doesn’t really have a better place to live. 🙂 How Many Strands of Thread Should I Use?
When it comes to working with embroidery patterns, there are only a few things you need to know – where to get patterns, and how to transfer them to whatever you’re embroidering.
If you’re getting a little more advanced you might also want to know how to enlarge or reduce a pattern to make it exactly the size you need.
Here are all my posts about working with patterns.
Embroidery is a fabulous craft – inexpensive, portable, and as easy or complicated as you want to make it.
I’ve organized here all the embroidery tutorials on Shiny Happy World into groups that walk you through every step of the process – from choosing materials to transferring your pattern, lots of different stitches, and suggestions for finishing and displaying your work. Think of this page as the table of contents linking out to all the info you’ll need.
If you’re just getting started, you’ll be able to work systematically through these posts with any Shiny Happy World pattern. So jump right in!
Each of these links will take you to a page with more info on that topic – usually including links to other pages with more detailed info and tutorials.
Each of those pages will have suggested links to keep moving you through the lessons. There will also always be a link back to this – the main Learn to Embroider page – so you can refer back to the main Table of Contents as needed and jump to any topic you like.
Here are several free patterns that work with just some simple resizing. This post about making coasters has info about resizing an applique pattern that can be applied to any of these projects.
