5 Tips for Satin Stitch
Satin stitch is a beautiful embroidery stitch that can be used to fill in a shape with smooth solid colour. Here are some tips to help you stitch satin stitch more beautifully.
Satin stitch is a beautiful hand-embroidery stitch made up of straight stitches. Ideally, all your threads will lay right beside each other in parallel lines, but sometimes things go a little wonky.
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Below you will find:
- video tutorial
- step-by-step written tutorial with pictures
Video
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Caveats:
- If you are happy with your satin stitch, then I’m not trying to tell you that you are wrong and doing a bad job. I’m not the embroidery police. But if you wish it looked different or more like pictures you see, then I will explain how these little tweaks will help.
- This is not an exhaustive list of tips. There are lots of other methods and satin stitch variations. But I believe these five tips are the most foundational and will make the biggest impact.
- No matter what techniques you use, the biggest improvement comes with practice. You will naturally improve over time just like with any other skill. You can use the right tools, materials and techniques, but nothing can replace practice and time.
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Tips
For my samples, I will be stitching a little heart shape. This is a good practice shape because it has straight edges, curves and points.
I am stitching on cotton fabric with two and three strands of embroidery floss (see note in number 1).
The first sample piece is just stitched without using any of these tips. I just used three strands of floss as they came off the skein without any special treatment. It looks fine, but these tips can help make it better.
1. Separate your strands of embroidery floss (and reduce number of strands)
If your floss is twisted, it will be almost impossible to get the strands to lay beside each other when you are stitching.
Before threading your needle, separate the strands and then place them back together. They should be beside each other with no twist.
Think of the difference between a ribbon and a rope. It is more flat than round.
This is called stripping the floss. For more details about this, see Ten Tips for using Embroidery Floss.
Note: The two sides of samples also use different numbers of strands of thread. On side a, I used three strands of floss and on side b I used two strands. This is the same for all future samples.
2. Use a laying tool
A laying tool will help keep your threads from getting twisted while you are stitching. You can purchase fancy laying tools, but even another needle will work. Be creative and try what you have before investing in something.
Use the laying tool to hold tension on the stitches while the you are pulling the thread through to the back. The tension will keep it straight.
3. Work from inside out
When stitching a shape (especially with curves), start stitching in the middle of the shape, stitch out to one side and then to the other side.
This will help your stitches align to the shape.
4. Give reference lines
Before stitching, use a ruler and draw a few lines in the direction you want the stitches to go. This will help you keep the stitches straight across the shape and not start to slant.
Another option is to take parallel stitches to use as reference instead of drawing on lines.
5. Backstitch border (inner or outer)
Stitching a border around the edge of the shape will help the edge be more smooth.
There are many options for this. You can stitch the border first and then do your satin stitch over top of the border. You can stitch the border first and have your satin stitches be inside the border. Or you can stitch the border after you have done the satin stitch.
You can use any stitch for the border, but I have used backstitch and wrapped backstitch in the sample.
In this sample, I stitched the heart with back stitch and then stitched the satin stitch over top.
The satin stitch helps the edge be smooth and gives a bit of dimension to the stitching.
In this sample, I stitched the heart with wrapped backstitch and then added the satin stitch to the inside of the shape.
With this technique, I didn’t have to worry about making the edges of the heart perfectly smooth because they were covered by the back stitch border.
Stitching with a single strand
In this last sample, I used all five of the tips provided, but I stitched with only one strand of embroidery floss.
You can clearly see differences between this piece and the first sample that I made.
As I said in the caveats above, you might not care about the small differences in stitching and that is fine. Embroider in the way that makes you happy.
But if you are trying to get your satin stitch to look a certain way and struggling to find the technique, then try these five tips. They will help get the traditional satin stitch look.