The darning stitch is about making rows of straight running stitches near each other. The technique of darning is used to mend torn clothes, especially socks and looks like a woven patch.
A fabric is made of weft and warp yarn. Weft is the yarn that runs vertically, while warp is the yarn that runs horizontally. They interlock with each other to form the fabric. While mending torn fabric, the darning stitch is used to ‘rebuild’ the weft and warp of the worn out area.
This lesson, however, will show you only the ’back and forth’ stitch technique of darning stitch. The purpose is to use this lesson as reference for Embroidery works (and not to mend clothes 
). The most popular embroidery where darning is used for embroidery purpose is the pattern darning.
You need to know the running stitch to be able to do darning stitch.
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| Fig 1: Do a row of running stitch, starting from A and ending at B. Then, turn around and begin the second row of running stitch from C to end at D. Keep this process of stitching rows of running stitches back and forth. Note that each row is ‘stepped’ in order to get a brick like formation. |
You can turn a couple of rows of darning stitch into a base for beautiful patterns like we did in parallel running stitch and stepped running stitch.
Tags: embroidery tutorial, hand embroidery, parallel running stitch, pattern darning, running stitch, running stitch family, running stitch variants, stepped running stitch
Your site is very instructive even to a none sewer.
Nice.
Hi sarah… you doing a great job… very useful website…
hai Sarah! thankyou so much for your tutorials. They are so helpful for me. i had so many doubts about different stitch types and now i am cleared of my doubts.You have taken good effort in leaving nothing to doubt.thanks bye.
Dear Mallika,
Do share some of your works with us.
Thanks for your words. It makes all the effort worthwhile to know that you have been enjoying our pages and to the right tone.
hai sarah!
your designs are so nice.You are doing good job.Your site is very effective.
Hi Sarah,
I want to do a Phulkari embroidery piece, like in the picture. Phulkari embroidery like this supposedly uses long and short darning stitches, but I cannot figure out how it uses darning stitches. Help please