Embroidery fill stitches

This super forgiving and simple technique provides a fun texture to your work!

Lately, I’ve been having a discussion with some beginning embroiderers about filling stitches that work well on surface embroidery projects, especially where you’re filling small elements here and there in a standard stylized or realistic design. I thought I would share the results of that discussion here, in a distilled version, in case you struggle ...

Burden stitch is a lovely stitch for filling areas of your embroidery. It creates a good texture and can be stitched in different ways to mix this up.

Learn how to fill the parts of embroidery design with texture and color with these six embroidery stitches: Seed stitch, French knots, Long and short stitch, Satin stitch, Weave stitch and Chain stitch filling. Click to watch video tutorial now or Pin for later.

Try this simple embroidery tip to know where to stitch for exact hand embroidery stitches.

Brick Stitch This is one of the simplest ways to fill a space. Brick stitch is done by stitching staggered lines of back stitch side by side. So once you know your back stitch you're good to go! Similarly, many line stitches (stem, chain, split) can be placed side by side to fill a space.Satin Stitch Another simple but very effective way to fill a small area. Long straight stitches are laid side by side to give a cohesive block of colour. The fewer threads used here the better, as they lie…

Here are 9 of my go-to hand embroidery stitches for filling in spaces, step-by-step instructions, and examples.

Learn how to stitch fly stitch. A stitch that can be used as a filling stitch, a decorative line and a stand alone stitch. Pretty versatile!

My default stitch for when I need to fill an area in an embroidery pattern is satin stitch but I don’t particularly enjoy stitching it so I’ve been enjoying trying out a range of different filling stitches.

Here are 9 of my go-to hand embroidery stitches for filling in spaces, step-by-step instructions, and examples.