The How To Embroider Letters series continues with another creative way to stitch letters and monograms. Last week we went through some of the basic stitches used for lettering. Today I bring you an easy tutorial on how to combine the stem and satin stitch to create cute little monograms.
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Tips for Embroidering Letters by Hand
For this tutorial, we’ll be stitching together the letters “A” and “B”, both lower and uppercase. If you’re looking to practice, you can download the exact same letters I used from the Free Pattern Library.
If you’d like to apply the same style to your own letters, you can use a word processing program to type a word, print it out, and transfer it onto your fabric, then stitch them in the same style.
A great resource where you can find free fonts for personal use is dafont.com. You’ll find there a huge library with all sorts of creative fonts, many of them suitable for the techniques we’ll be using today.
- Font choice: When embroidering in the style of the letter “A”, choose a simple font. I used the Arial font.
- Fine lines: For achieving the same fine outlines as the letter “A”, use just 1 strand of thread.
- Stitching curves: When stitching curves shorten the length of your stitches.
- End each letter the proper way: Don’t carry the thread on the back of your embroidery, from one letter to another, or from one side of a letter to another.
How to Embroider Letters Using Stem Stitch, Satin Stitch and French Knot
When embroidering the letter “A” we’ll use a combination of stem stitch and french knots. For the letter “B”, we’ll use the satin stitch. If you are not familiar with these stitches, I recommend checking out the embroidery stitches section.
The letters in this tutorial are quite big in size, so if you’re planning to stitch them as small monograms you’ll have to scale the pattern down from your printer’s settings.
1. Stem Stitch and French Knot Letters
The stem stitch is my favorite stitch for lettering. What I like the most about the stem stitch is how versatile this stitch is, it really works great with both cursive and non-cursive fonts (script). For the outlines, I used only 1 strand of thread, and for the french knots 2 strands.
When using the stem stitch for lettering, there are two important things to consider. Your loop should be below the needle and always stitch in the same direction.
I am right-handed, so I’m working the stitch from left to right. If you’re left-handed, the stitch is worked right to left. In order to keep the correct direction of your stitches, you’ll have to turn your hoop around as you stitch.
When reaching a sharp corner, and you might not have enough space for one last stem stitch, end with a short straight stitch.
Stitch the small dots with french knots, using 2 strands of thread and wrapping the thread around the needle 2 times.
Do not wind the thread more than three times! Wrapping the thread around more than three times will only make your french knots looser. If you wish to create a bigger knot, just play around with the number of strands you’re using.
When stitching the lowercase letter, you’ll find it curvier, remember to shorten your stitch length when you embroider the corners.
When reaching a sharp corner or you need to change the direction of your stitches, like the example below, even if you shorten your stitches you’ll still end up with a slightly rounded corner.
What I did in order to keep that corner sharp, was I ended the last stem stitch, turned my hoop around, and started again continuing stitching the normal stem stitch.
Let’s have a look at the back of our monogram. In order to keep your back tidy, make sure you’re not carrying the thread on the back of your embroidery, from one side to another.
Continue stitching the entire monogram using stem stitch for the outlines and french knots for the dotted details.
2. Satin Stitch Letters
Time to embroider the letter “B”. Let’s see how to embroider letters using the satin stitch.
This embroidered letter is very similar with the floral alphabet project we went through a while ago. We’ll start by outlining our letter using 2 strands of thread, then stitch the satin stitch on top again using 2 strands.
It can be tricky sometimes to keep a straight line when stitching the Satin Stitch. An easy trick I like using is first holding my thread in the direction I want, as straight as I can, then stab the fabric. I create a few straight paralel lines, which are much easier to fill with other straight lines.
Build up your satin stitch until the first section is completely covered and it looks smooth enough.
Repeat the same process for all three sections of our letter. Then stitch in the same manner the lower letter “b”.
This is how my final letters turned out. Cute little monograms which I think would look really nice stitched on children’s items. A nice decoration using your child’s initial, a small monogram on a clothing item, or really aything you can think of.
Feel free to adapt these techniques to your own lettering projects. The How To Embroider Letters series will continue next week, with more creative ways to create beautiful letters and monograms.
Stem and satin stitch are great options when embroidering flowers too. For more inspiration, make sure you check out this flower coloring pages article. Even though these printables are not exactly embroidery patterns, you can totally tweak them for your lovely hand embroidery projects.
Until then, remember that you can download free patterns from the Free Pattern Library. To access it just fill out the form below and I will send you an email with your password.
More Hand Embroidery Tutorials
- How to Embroider Letters: 5 Basic Stitches
- Floral Alphabet: Stitching the Letter
- Floral Alphabet: Stitching the Leaves
- Floral Alphabet: Stitching the Flower
Do you like lettering embroidery projects? Come over to our Facebook Group and tell us all about it!
SAVE THIS FOR LATER? ADD THIS LETTERING ARTICLE TO YOUR FAVOURITE PINTEREST BOARD
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