Embroidery stitch type

See also

• Computerized embroidery
• Embroidery software
• Embroidery glossary
• Concepts of computerized embroidery
• Hooping and stabilizing in computerized embroidery
• Embroidery patch
• Computerized embroidery in education
• Conference embroidery
• Hotfix stone

• Quality: to improve

I will try to revise this over the next few days and also include some software specific approaches if I can find the information

Basic Stitch types

According to Wikipedia, retrieved 12:00, 2 June 2011 (CEST), an embroidery stitch, “is defined as the movement of the embroidery needle from the backside of the fabric to the front side and back to the back side. The thread stroke on the front side produced by this is also called stitch. In the context of embroidery, an embroidery stitch means one or more stitches that are always executed in the same way, forming a figure of recognisable look. Embroidery stitches are also called stitches for short. Embroidery stitches are the smallest units in embroidery. Embroidery patterns are formed by doing many embroidery stitches, either all the same or different ones, either following a counting chart on paper, following a design painted on the fabric or even working freehand.”

There are many stitch types, but we could distinguish three plus two main types according to function

• Running stitches for stitching lines
• Satin stitches are used to stitch wider lines, AKA columns. Typically, a narrow zigzag stitch is used.
• Fill stitches (to fill in larger sections in various ways)
• Jump stitches (i.e. no stitches), to get from one point to another. Those can be manually cut away once the machine has embroidered the pattern.
• Lock stitches should be used at the end of all elements (in particular columns and fills)

Ripka, Mychko and Deyneka in a literature review, found several taxonomies.

Running stitches

The bean stitch uses a pattern like two stitches forward and one stitch back, i.e. this type of running stitch will create a strong solid line.

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Parameters:

• length
• repetition (passes of thread, usually between one and three)

ZigZag and Satin stitches

The Satin stitch also known as Damask stitch is used in most cultures and both in hand and machine embroidery. Satin stitches are used for small "colums", e.g. lettering or borders.

There exist several variants. A normal satin stitch uses parallel straight stitches which is a kind of zig-zag stitch.

|/|/|/|/|

A typical zigzag stitch looks more like this:

/\/\/\/\

Parameters:

• Stitch length
• Angle (usually orthogonal, but small columns need oblique stitches)
• Density
• Underlay

Fill stitches

Are use to fill in larger areas. Each advanced software will offer numerous built-in patterns.

Parameters: many, e.g.

• The pattern (motif) itself
• Stitch length (often by default about 4mm)
• Density
• Direction
• Underlay
• Size of (sub) motives

Filling strategies and patterns

A first questions is how to fill in sections (areas). One ground rule is to use a variety of stitches and stitching directions and for two reasons:

• Push/pull effect can be compensated (see below)
• The design looks more interesting.

Good digitizing software should help with that.

A second question concerns density. In programs like Stitch Era, density is measured in terms of lines / mm. For example its default density of 5 means a stitch every 0.2mm and this is fairly dense. Density of 4 also should still look dense. E.g. in Embird Studio, default density seems to be 4.