Fern Stitch: Hand Embroidery

Fern stitch is a useful stitch to know, especially if you’re sewing plants and flowers. Obviously you can use it to sew ferns and other plants, but it can be used in other ways as well! On the little purse I’ve been making, I’ve used fern stitch for the lavender.

Fern stitch is made up of three little stitches, sewn in the same way and repeated along a line. It is worked from top to bottom.

How to Sew Fern Stitch

1. Bring your needle up to the right side of the fabric at the top of the first stitch. Make a vertical stitch.

2. Bring the needle back up to the side, then take the thread through the same spot as the bottom of the vertical stitch.

3. Bring the needle up on the other side and make another stitch in the same way, ending in the same place as the others.

4. Make another vertical stitch by bringing the needle up just underneath the first stitch, then taking it back through where the first stitch ends.

5. Make the stitches at the sides in the same way as previously, ending the stitches at the bottom of the second vertical stitch.

You are basically sewing a backstitch, while stopping off to make the stitches at the side.

To keep it neat, try to ensure that the stitches are the same size.

If you worry about neatness, you could draw 3 lines, equally spaced apart. The centre line would be where you would sew the vertical stitches and the lines at the side would be a guide for the stitches that come out at the sides. The top of the stitch would touch the line. I didn’t bother with drawing lines, I found just sewing the stitches by sight was fine. If the odd stitch was a bit wonky, I just undid it!

If you like learning embroidery stitches, you might also like these posts.

Lazy daisy stitch

Woven wheel stitch

Stem stitch

And if you would like the embroidery design that I’ve used on the little purse pictured above, you can download it for free here!

These are affiliate links for embroidery stuff on Hobbycraft.

DMC thread

Anchor thread

Embroidery hoops

Needles

Linking up here.

Woven Wheel Stitch

One of the lovely things about embroidering by hand is that you can get all sorts of different textures that you just can’t if you use the sewing machine.

Woven wheel stitch is a raised stitch and it adds a little bit of a 3D effect to your embroidery. Kind of like French knots, except that they are bigger. You can make them as big or as small as you like, depending on what you need!

They are useful for making flower centres (I used them for the centre of these daisies), or you can use them as flowers on their own. I’ve used woven wheel stitch for the poppies on this piece of embroidery that I’m currently working on!

They can also be used as eyes, buttons, in fact anything where you might want a little raised circle!

It’s easy and it’s fun to do, although it does take a bit more time than some of the other stitches.

How to Sew Woven Wheel Stitch

1. Decide roughly how big you would like the wheel to be. You could draw a circle using a template, or just mark it with a pencil.

2. Bring the thread up from back to front into the centre of where you want the stitch to be.

3. From the centre, sew 5 stitches going outwards, roughly equal distance apart.

4. Now for the weaving! Bring the thread to the front again, between 2 of the stitches and near the centre. Take the needle over the first stitch, under the next, then over the next.

Keep going like this until you have filled up the stitches.

5. Take the needle through to the wrong side and tie it off.

If you want to make a larger woven wheel stitch, you can increase the number of stitches in step 3. It will need to be an odd number though.

If you like this tutorial, you might also like this one showing how to sew lazy daisies.

And if you would like 2 free embroidery designs to use however you like, you can download them here.

If you’re wondering how to transfer designs to fabric, I have a post about doing that using your printer here.

These are affiliate links for embroidery stuff on Hobbycraft.

DMC thread

Anchor thread

Embroidery hoops

Needles

Linking up here.