How To: Applique with Blanket Stitch, Part II

Welcome back! Let's get right down to it and finish our applique!

This close up, mine is definitely not perfect. But, this blanket is for a newborn so I doubt he will mind much. :) That's what I mean about doing things yourself. People are not going to notice the tiny imperfections, they will just be happy that you put time & effort into something just for them!

After the last post, you should've ended with your letters ironed onto your blanket and ready to start the blanket stitch. It's pretty hard to just explain how to do a blanket stitch so there will be lots of pictures.

To start, you will need to thread your needle. I liked the thickness of two strands of the embroidery thread, so I threaded my needle with an arm span of the embroidery thread and tied the ends together with a knot.

When you are ready to start stitching, pick the place on your letter that you want to start. I started in the middle of a flat side because I thought that would be easiest. You will start with Stitch A shown in the photo below.

You come from the back and insert your needle straight up. Pull your thread all the way through until your knot catches on the back of your work.

Your next move is to insert the needle at an angle into Stitch B and exit your work at Stitch C shown above. As you pull your thread through your work, make sure the loop created by stitches A and B is underneath your needle as shown below.

In this picture, you can also see where I tried my first idea, which was to sew the letters on with my sewing machine. Fail. But I'm happy it didn't work because the blanket stitch is so much cuter!

Now, on your first stitch, you do not want to pull your loop all the way tight as you will use it to finish off once you've gone all the way around the letter. This part was hard for me because I couldn't determine how loose to leave it, but you get better with each letter you finish. I would suggest pulling it mostly tight, but not too tight. Very helpful, I know. :)

So now you will just keep repeating those steps. The length between stitches is totally up to you. On a larger piece of work, more space between the stitches would be fine, but I thought with the smaller letters, too much space between the stitches might look funny. As for your tension, you will pull the stitches pretty tight, but not so tight that your embroidery thread disappears behind your letters or pulls up on top of your letters. You will know how tight to pull it once you get started.

As long as you are going in a straight line, it's pretty simple! When you get to a corner, it's a little different because you want to make sure it stays lined up with the right angle. It's a simple little trick that will hold your corner in place.

When you get to the corner, you will insert your needle in your stitch B so that stitch C will come out directly at the corner. I somehow forgot to take a picture of this part, but just as an illustration, you will want your needle to follow the line in the picture below.

You will pull it tight just as you have on your other stitches. Then, to hold this stitch in place, you will want to do a tiny stitch over the loop. So basically, insert your needle going down into your work, very near to the blanket stitch loop. This stitch will be "pinning down" your corner so it can't move.

This is not a great picture, but it shows how closely you want to insert your needle. When you pull this stitch tight, you really won't even be able to see it.

Now your needle should be under your work. The next thing you need to do it get it back on top so you can continue in your ABC stitch pattern. Insert your needle up through you work in a manner that will "sneak" it back into the blanket stitch loop.

I tried not to catch any of the fleece letter when I sneaked back into my loop. Once you pull up all the way, you should be able to continue as normal.

When it's time to do an "inside corner," like in the letter K above, you will do something a little different. This was harder for me because the letters are so small, you don't have much room to work with. And for the inside corner, you want to line up three stitches so that they all come out lined up with the center of the "inside corner."

Stitch One

Stitch Two

Stitch Three

Whew, we have covered a lot of ground. You should be pretty set on how to blanket stitch now, we just need to learn how to finish off!

When you get close to the end of your letter, you need to look at spacing and make sure the last few stitches will be spaced evenly. Your last stitch will technically be the next-to-last stitch because your very last step to finish the letter will be to just loop your needle through. AGAIN, I am terrible, and I forgot to take a picture of this very important step! So, I borrowed one I found on google. 

See how you loop your needle under the first stitch you made? This is why you don't pull the first stitch all the way tight. After you loop it under that stitch, you insert your needle down through your work at the edge of your letter. Clip your thread and tie a knot! Voila!

You can see my blanket stitch on the back of my blanket. I think it looks cool so I am not worried about covering it up, but I am wondering how the knots will hold up over time since they are exposed. An option to fix this problem before it arises would be to applique the blanket before you hem it. Then you could put a backing on the blanket and your stitches on the back would be hidden from view.  I'm just going to roll with mine how it is and if it needs touching up over the years (or weeks if he's not a kid that's attached to his blankie), then I will just fix it as needed.

Thanks for coming back to view the rest of the tutorial! Please comment any questions or suggestions! :) And don't forget to pin it so you can save it for later!

~Kasey