My First Bucilla Felt Stocking Kit: Embroidery Stitches 101

In my last blog I talked about attaching sequins and beads to embellish a Bucilla felt stocking kit. These kits also have you do a bit of embroidery work to create patterns, faces, outlines, and even the name you will put on the stocking to personalize it.

In the Jolly St. Nick kit, the Color/Symbol Guide says I will use an outline stitch, a back stitch, a straight stitch, and a running stitch (as well as the appliqué stitch to sew felt pieces together). The Guide provides you with a symbol that tells you the stitch and color of thread you should use. It also tells you how many strands of floss to use for each stitch.

I do not have much experience with embroidery. I imagine some of these stitches take a little patience and practice. While the Bucilla instructions do include an illustration of each stitch, I thought it might be nice to have some step-by-step instructions for creating the stitches used in Bucilla felt appliqué kits.

Straight Stitch

This is the most basic of stitches. If you think of the line you are stitching as having lettered points, the straight stitch is just going up at point A (the beginning of the line) and down at point B (the end of the line) to create one straight stitch.

Running Stitch

A running stitch is like making a dashed line . . . leaving a space between each stitch. In a Bucilla felt kit, the felt is actually printed with a dashed line, so you know exactly where to stop and start each stitch. Here is an illustration of the running stitch.

Back Stitch

The backstitch creates a solid line using multiple stitches. If you looked closely, you would see where each stitch starts and stop. It’s called the back stitch because you work backwards, starting your first stitch a stitch’s length from the end of the line and sewing back toward the start of the line. Here’s an illustration.

Outline Stitch

The outline stitch makes a thicker, tight line with little separation between stitches visible.

If you think of the line you wish to outline stitch as having lettered points, you would go up at point A, down at point C, up at point B (half way between the stitch you just made), down at point D, etc. Each time you come up to start a new stitch, you push the last stitch above your needle so your working floss is always above the line you are stitching. You don’t poke your needle through the floss of your last stitch (this would be a split stitch). You start each stitch slightly below the last. Below is an illustration.

These are the four embroidery stitches used in the Jolly St. Nick Bucilla stocking kit. If you want more examples of how to do these stitches, just search the web. There are many, many embroidery tutorials available online.

I am slowly working on my kit (I took a bit of a break to learn embroidery stitches!). Here’s a picture of my kit in its current state. I used the straight stitch with light green floss on the lower half of the white border, and the running stitch with darker green floss on the top half.

In my next blog, I will illustrate more embroidery stitches that different Bucilla kits use (like the chain stitch and a French knot). As always, any tips and tricks you post on our Facebook page are appreciated! - Kirsten