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An image of a ruler measuring some embroidery stitches on fabric. Overlayed is a blue square with the text hand embroidery, how to get your stitches the same size, www.embellishedelephant.co.uk

How to get your stitches the same size

June 9, 2021

There are some designs where you want stitches to be an identical size to give a polished finished. But how do you achieve this? Here are five techniques that might help.

A picture of  some fabric in an embroidery hoop. On it is being stitched a row chevron stitches in blue thread

By eye

I have to admit this is normally the method I use. I feel fairly confident about judging small distances. I tend to stitch slowly and make sure that with each stitch I’m happy with the position of the needle before I complete a stitch. I also look back at the past few stitches to check I’m happy with the consistency and unpick if anything looks out of place.

For slightly longer stitches I use the needle and my finger to help judge the length of the stitch.

A picture of a ruler next to some embroidery, measuring the size of stitches

Use a ruler

This can really help with getting the right stitch length but you still need to make sure the position of the needle is accurate.

Working with a ruler can also be a bit cumbersome (even if it is my trusty WWF ruler I’ve had for 25 years).

A close up picture of a design printed onto fabric for embroidery

Draw guidelines

This is a great alternative to to ruler especially if you are able to remove or stitch over the guidelines that you make. It means you don’t need to keep picking up/putting down the ruler with each stitch.

The type of guideline you use will depend on the stitch you are making but if I use this method I tend to use tiny dots rather than full lines as these are easier to stitch over.

In this picture the guidelines are pre-printed onto the fabric which makes it even easier!

A picture of a hand holding an embroidery hoop. Marked on the index finger of the left hand are three pen marks showing the stitch length needed

Marks on your finger

I saw this ingenious method on Instagram as a tip for stitching blanket stitch. I’ve not tried it myself yet but in taking this photo I did find that I had to hold the hoop a bit funny to get the markings to be where I needed them. A bit of trial and error might be needed for this one!

a picture of hardanger embroidery in white on evenweave fabric

Evenweave fabric

The clue is in the name - this type of fabric has an even number of warp and weft threads per inch. It means that if you stitch is five holes in length you can count this number of holes for every stitch you make to get stitches of identical length. It’s the fabric used for techniques such as blackwork and hardanger but you can also use high count evenweave fabrics for standard embroidery too (higher count means more warp/weft threads per inch and smaller gaps inbetween).

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