Picot stitch

Picot stitch is a fun way to add depth and texture to your hand embroidered pieces, and it's actually not as hard as it looks (I promise!).

You can make all sorts of variations in shape with this stitch!

In this post, I'll take you through picot stitch step-by-step; if a video tutorial is easier for you to follow, go ahead and scroll to the very bottom of this post!

Step 1: Gather your materials.

For picot stitch, you'll need to have a pin (with a rounded head), in addition to the normal supplies (e.g., floss, fabric, hoop, scissors). I'll be stitching this example with variegated floss.

Step 2: Place your pin.

Place your pin in your fabric where you want the *top* of your stitch to be. This will help secure our floss as we weave.

Step 3: Stitch your base.

Bring your floss up through your fabric wherever you want the *bottom* of your stitch to be.

Wrap your floss around the head of your pin.

Bring your needle back down through your fabric, even with your initial stitch.

You'll need a a total of three stitches for your base. To get your third stitch, bring your needle up through your fabric in between your first two stitches.

Wrap that third stitch behind your pin. Now you have your base and are ready to start weaving!

Step 4: Weave.

You'll be weaving from the top to the bottom. Without piercing the fabric, bring your needle under, over, and under, then pull.

Now you'll go in the other direction. Again, make sure you're not piercing the fabric. This time, you'll go over, under, over, and then pull.

Continue weaving until you reach the base.

As you weave, you can use your needle to gently nudge your floss toward the tip of your shape, which can help you to create a tighter shape.

Here's what a few passes of the weaving looks like:

Here's what my shape looked like once I reached the halfway point:

As I mentioned above, for this example I'm using variegated floss. In this photo, you can see that the color changed mid-weave!

Step 5: Secure your stitch and remove your pin!

Once you've finished weaving all the way to the base of your stitch, you can bring your needle back down through your fabric to secure your stitch.

Here's what the back of my picot stitch looks like:

Remove your pin, and you're done!

Picot stitch is a fun way to play around with size and shape, and is such an easy way to add dimension to your pieces!

Video tutorial for picot stitch

Here's a very brief, beginner-friendly video tutorial where I demonstrate picot stitch. As a friendly reminder, most of my embroidery kits also come with full-length, stitch by stitch video tutorials!