Feather stitch is a decorative stitch, usually, used to accompany it with embelishments or other forms of stitches like the French knot. This stitch can be used liberally to make beautiful borders, horizontal or vertical fillings, or even designs with curves. It looks like a series of interconnected ‘V’s.
It is always advised to make stitch lines to avoid any asymmetry. I have made four parallel stitch lines, A, B, C, D. The stitches will fall between these lines and the needle will pass through these lines.
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| Fig 1: Begin by bringing up the needle from B. Now, put the needle in through D and bring it out from C. Note that the points on B and D falls on a straight line, and C lies diagonally to both B and D. Pull the needle out with the thread under it, as shown. We would form our first ‘V’. |
Fig 2: We now move to make our next ‘V’. Continue to put the needle in through A and bring it out through B. Pull the needle out with the thread under it as shown, to make the next ‘V’. |
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| Fig 3: Now, continue the procedure by putting the needle in through the outer stitch line and brining it out from the inner stitch line. We keep alternating between the left and right side to make the ‘V’s- putting in the needle through A and bringing it out from B; putting the needle in through D and bringing it out from C. |
Fig 4: Once a small portion of feather stitch is done, this is how it would look like. |
Tags: blanket stitch, decorative stitch, feather stitch, feather stitch family
Awesome! Very nice and descriptive..had a good time looking at the lovely pictures and reading the details of each type of stitch!
keep up the good work
Thanks Aparna.
Awesome! Very nice.
u r really talented person.
Thank you Mili.
i STRONGLY AGREE WITH YOU
I was wondering what you do about the pencil marks after you’ve completed your embroidery. I have just gotten into the embroidery and haven’t done any designs that have empty space yet because of the fear of pencil showing through. Tips?
Dear Nikki,
Light pencil marks are very often washable. So you don’t have to worry about it leaving marks. If you want to embroider on a fabric that will never be washed, try using a tailor’s chalk which gets erased easily.
Did it help?
Hi, I’m new to embroidery and have found your website to have perfect and easy to understand instructions. I am wondering how you are able to get such even stitching for the diagonal (the V) stitches
Hi Crystal,
If you draw stitch lines, like in the illustrations, and keep each diagonal stitch parallel to the previous one, you can get a fairly even stitch.
I understand your featherstitch but I have a project of joining two wool hexagon shapes with a feather stitch. How do I join them? Do I lay them flat against each other?
C
Dear Carolyn, I not too sure how do you want the hexagon shapes joined…i mean, do you want them joined one over the other or side by side?
Hey! I loved this technique, it’s a lot easier than it looks (i’m a beginner) and i found it really effective and it looks really pretty!
Keep it up!
Thanks for making this website, you illustrate all of it so clearly!
xx
My husband’s grandmother made a quilt with old corduroy squares. She had a decorative stitch on them similar to the feather stitch, but in a straight line not the zig-zag that the feather stitch does. It (to my very novice eye) looks almost like a cross between the feather and herringbone. Is that even possible? If so, how would you do it? I have had to take apart the quilt because many of the squares became threadbare with age (the quilt was over 30 years old) and the batting had all lumped together. I’ve made new squares and am working on putting it back together, but would like to be able to add the decorative stitching back as well.
Thanks for your help.
Thanks for spelling this out in a manner that is understandable. I’ve been checking other tutorials & simply could not get it right. The lines make all of the difference.
Thanks!!!
[...] In this challenge, a piece has to be made primarily of one stitch – in this case, the feather stitch. The theme of the issue was “woodlands,” so hopefully the challenge piece would fit in [...]