Hand Embroidery Stitches – Adora Top – Unbiased Patterns

Hey y’all – today I’m sharing how to hand embroider to add a unique touch to a garment. I embroidered my Adora Top – which is part of the Unbiased pattern collection. I love the woven yoke on this pattern that is the perfect canvas for something like this.

Though I’ve seen other patterns with a woven front yoke, I think the deep back yoke on this top and dress really sets it apart.

Since I planned all along to add some embroidery to the very lightweight chambray fabric I used, I interfaced the entire front and back yokes with lightweight fusible interfacing before I sewed the top. This added some body and reinforcement to support the embroidery. After sewing up the top, I added the 6 point cross stitch border.

Then I felt like it needed more, so I did a blanket stitch around the neckline. And it still wasn’t quite done, so I traced a design out of (affiliate link) Patterns for Theatrical Costumes (and one of my favorite sewing books) and satin stitch embroidered it in the center of the front yoke.

If you want to know how to do these stitches, I made a little video for you that you can watch below. If the video doesn’t load for some reason, you can also watch on YouTube here. If you prefer a written tutorial, I also grabbed some frames from the video and put them below the video, so just scroll past to see those.

Let’s start with the six point cross stitch. This one starts as a regular cross stitch.

1. Imagine a square. Bring your thread up through the top corner of the square.
2. Put the needle in through the diagonal bottom corner,
3. and bring it up through the other top corner.
4. Put the needle in through the other bottom corner
5. and bring it up in the middle of the top side of the imaginary square.
6. Put the needle in through the middle of the bottom side of the square
7. and bring it up in the middle of the right side of the imaginary square.
8. Finally put the needle down in the center of the left side of the square and bring it up through the top corner to start the next 6 point cross stitch.

To do a satin stitch

1. Trace out the shape you want to stitch with a (affiliate link) marking pen. Bring the needle up at the top of the shape.
2. Bring the needle down straight across from your starting point.
3. The stitch looks like this step.
4. Bring the needle up on the side you started on, right next to your first stitch.

When you’ve done a few stitches next to each other, they’ll start to look like the above image. Continue until the shape is filled in.

Now the blanket stitch. This is really easy – it’s just a whipstitch except before you pull each loop tight, you pass the needle through the loop so that a border of thread is created along the edge of the fabric.

Finally, to knot your thread, make sure not to pull your very last stitch tight on the back of the fabric. Instead leave a little loop. Wind your needle through the loop of the stitch as shown below and then pull the stitch tight, creating a knot.

Get your Unbiased collection of PDF sewing patterns while it’s on super sale through October 2 by adding it to your cart below, or click here to find out more.