Learn how to seed stitch and how to shade with seeding

Resurrection of the dead sewing lessons :) Let's talk pearl sewing today!

With this lesson I want to start with the topic of open hand embroidery.

The open fill fills the shape so the background fabric is visible. In contrast to satin knitting and long and short knitting , the most common type of hand embroidery is stiff, which completely covers the fabric.

There are many different types of open fills in hand embroidery and to be honest I haven't tried them all, so I'll explore this side of sewing with you :)

But this time we will only discuss about the seed point only. What a beautiful technique! I like the texture it gives the embroidery, when in fact it's kind of a "see-through" fill. It is full of color but at the same time not completely, providing comfort and ventilation to the area.

Here's an example of how seed stitches can be used in a project:

So let's take a closer look at this technique.

In fact, everything is very simple!

Just make some small dots scattered in a random area.

It's almost everything! You can change the stitch direction and size.

You can also find books and tutorials that call this technique "powder". The comparison is pretty clear right? First of all your seeds are as small as mine haha. I swear I accidentally made it so small! For some reason it seems so.

There are also a few variations of the moss stitch you might want to know about.

The first is pair ranking .

Yes, with this variant you not only leave your balls, but you make several at once.

This is what the result looks like. As you can see, the color is now slightly lighter than the base moss weave.

You may be wondering... "What if I took just 2 strands of dental floss and sewed them into one stitch?"

And you certainly can! I think there will always be change. Because when you work a few seed stitches, there's still a little "air" between the stitches, you know?

And the last variation: marine cloth .

A sea stitch is a combination of 3 parallel stitches joined to another fabric.

My sea stitch here is very casual and imperfect in size and shape. But just so you know, marine knitting is very popular in numeracy work, for example, and can appear much more organized.

So here's an example of our moss stitch. You can see the weight of the fabric is getting heavier and heavier from single grain fabric to marine fabric.

And here's today's second topic: Pearl point shadows.

You may be familiar with the shading technique in pencil drawing. Sometimes you can create shadows by applying different line weights, but other times you can use patterns, points, curves, etc.

You can also do something like this with pearl braids.

A common example of shading on a seed stitch looks like this:

Initially distribute the drops loosely and apart from each other and gradually increase the density. What I like to do in this case is start with an airy dispersion and then thicken slightly, filling the form all the way up. And then I started moving in the opposite direction from bottom to top, adding more dots to my previous layer.

For shading, you can also use pearl variations. Start with single stitches, continue with even stitches and end with knitting stitches.

Or you can use the same single layer with the same density but a different color. I'm using 3 colors here, and although the shadows aren't very clear in the image, the idea is clear, isn't it?

Well, it's not about the shadow, it's about the ability to adjust the tip of the bead in a certain direction. It may remind you of running around knitting, but this planting is even more messy and relaxed.

And now that we've seen an example of a "regular" seed layer, here's one way to use it for shading. Increase the line density at the bottom and leave more white space at the top.

I want to know which one do you prefer? My favorites are numbers 1 and 5.

There are many other faces of this technique! Explore this point and try different ways to fill shapes, maybe you will get some new ideas :) And next time we will see another open fill method!