Satin Stitch

If you are a fan of needlepoint, satin stitch is sure to be one of your favorites due to its sheer brilliance in giving a textured finish to your embroidery. This makes it a powerful technique for filling up decorative designs like flower petals, leaves, and hearts.

Satin Stitch Instructions

First draw the pattern you want to embroider on your fabric. You can also trace the design with the help of a carbon paper if you want to. Make sure the pattern is full of bulky shapes so the satin stitch can look more prominent.

Initially, it is better to practice the stitch with regular geometric shapes like squares, rectangles and circles. Here, the instructions are given on filling up a square:

Step 1: Bring the needle up from the corner of any one of the edges of your shape.

Step 2: Take your needle down through the exactly opposite point on the facing edge.

Step 3: Bring the needle up through a point very close to the first point of emergence of the needle.

Step 4: Pull up the thread completely ensuring that the floss sits flat on the fabric.

Step 5: Repeat the process until the shape is completely filled. Take care to place the consecutive stitches close to each other and within the drawn guidelines to prevent unwanted gaps in the middle.

If the shape is irregular, like a heart, bird, star, flower or leaf, start filling up from the middle of the shape and work towards one end. Then poke up your needle again from the central part, very close to where you started off and finish filling up the other half.

Satin Stitch Video Tutorial

Uses

The main use of satin stitch is in hand embroidery, where it is often combined with other stitches like lazy daisy and French knot. Curves, flowers, and circles in the patterns look ravishing when done in this stitch.

In addition to that, it looks graceful in the borders of embroidered tops and pillows, hemlines of bedding, tapestry, quilt edging, aari work and smocking. It is also a good option for eyes and nose detailing on amigurumi.

A combination of long and short satin stitches can lend a marvelous look to shapes with corners.  Alphabets on monograms can be given a raised or embossed look by filling them up with back stitch before working satin stitch over it. This variation is also known as the padded satin stitch.