Embroidery is a timeless craft, deeply rooted in history. Women have always used embroidery to tell their stories, and to show their love as well as exploring their artistry. When we hand embroider, we join our sisters in a thread that spins back through the ages; sitting by the fire, sipping a warm drink as our needles fly through fabric and we paint pictures with silken thread.

Mastering this craft begins with learning simple stitches, the building blocks of all embroidery designs. Here are 10 basic stitches, suitable for beginners, that will help you to embroider up a storm!

1. Running Stitch

The running stitch is perhaps the simplest of embroidery stitches and that makes it a great place for beginners to start. It’s also very versatile and can be used to form simple patterns. It can also be used to create text and outline designs. It’s made up of small, evenly spaced stitches that create a line of dashes.

Start the stitch by bringing your needle up from the back of the fabric and then push it back down through the fabric to make a stitch. Repeat this process, leaving equal spaces between each stitch. Varying the length of the stitches and the spaces between them can change the look completely.

2. Back Stitch

The back stitch is another simple stitch, but again, it’s versatile and can be used for many different applications. It can be used to create smooth, continuous lines – so it’s often used for outlining designs and creating text. Unlike the running stitch, there are no gaps between the stitches in a back-stitch line.

To use back stitch, begin by sewing one running stitch. Next, come up from the back of your fabric a space ahead of the stitch, as though you are creating a gap. Then push the needle down into the end of the previous stitch. Repeat to create a continuous line with no spaces.

3D felted pods embellished with back stitch; Enter the Wildwoods

3. Split Stitch

The split stitch is made by splitting the thread of a completed stitch with the next stitch. This creates a sort of textured line. Like back stitch, it’s good for outlines and can also be used to fill in bigger designs. To start, make a small straight stitch. Then, bring your needle up again through the centre of that stitch, splitting the thread. Repeat the process to create a line with a kind of rippled, braided texture.

4. Stem Stitch

As the name might suggest, stem stitch is often used to create stems in floral designs. It’s good for embroidering both curved and straight lines. To do stem stitch, make a small running stitch, then bring your needle back up just beside the end of the last stitch, but not through the same hole. Make another stitch and repeat. The stitched line will have a slight twist to it, and that makes it wonderful for embroidering elegantly curving stems and vines.

5. Satin Stitch

Satin stitch is a beautiful yet simple stitch which is used to fill in areas of your design with solid colour. Satin stitch is a series of parallel straight stitches made side by side, used to cover an area in your embroidery, like ‘colouring in’ with a needle and thread. It’s often used for petals, leaves, or any area that requires a smooth-as-satin finish.

To fill an outline or shape with satin stitch, start by making a few parallel guide stitches into your shape to ensure the stitches stay parallel and do not drift to one side. Make a long straight stitch by bringing your needle up through from the back of your fabric on one side of your shape, and pushing the needle down again to make a long smooth stitch. Keep repeating these long straight stitches side by side until you have filled the chosen area.

6. French Knot

The French knot is used to create small round dot shaped stitches on the fabric. The stitch is ideal for making eyes, flowers, or adding a bobbled, knotted texture to a design. French knots are simple to make and add interest to your embroidery.

Bring your needle up through to the front of your fabric, then with the hand that is not holding the needle, grasp the thread a couple of inches from the end. Place your needle in front of the thread. Wrap the thread around your needle one or two times. Wrapping once gives a smaller French knot than wrapping twice.

Keeping the thread taut, push the needle partially but not fully back down close to the spot where you came up – not in the same hole or you may lose the knot completely. Give the length of floss you are holding in your non-needle hand a little pull downwards so the coil tightens and slides down the needle. With the coil of thread now held against the fabric, push the needle the rest of the way through, and you have a knot!

7. Chain Stitch

The chain stitch – unsurprisingly – creates a series of looped stitches that form a pattern like a chain. I learned to do this stitch as a girl at school – we had appalling turquoise blue toweling jumpsuits for PE and had to embroider our names in orange (!) chain stitch on the right breast. Despite that experience, it’s a stitch I still love!

Start by bringing your needle up through your fabric, then go down in the same spot, but don’t pull the thread all the way through. Leave a small loop. Then, bring your needle up within that loop and pull, securing the hoop in place to make the first ‘link’ in the chain. Repeat to create a chain-like line.

8. Lazy Daisy

The lazy daisy stitch (sometimes called the ‘detached chain stitch’) is a simple variation on the chain stitch. This embroidery stitch is lovely for creating leaves, petals, or teardrop shapes. It’s essentially a chain stitch that stands alone to make a shape like a petal and is not connected to others in a line like regular chain stitch.

To start a lazy daisy stitch, bring your needle up through your fabric and go back down leaving a loop, just as you did for regular chain stitch. Once again, as for chain stitch, bring your needle up inside the loop, but for lazy daisy make a small stitch to hold down the end of the loop. This forms your petal shape. Repeat in a circle to make a full ‘daisy’ flower.

Simple embroidery stitches creating background illustrations for a children’s story book; Enter the Wildwoods

9. Cross Stitch

Cross stitch is a highly popular stitch that is simple to do. It involves creating a series of crisscrossing stitches that form an X shape. This stitch is often used to create pictures and many books and kits have been created using ‘counted cross stitch’ embroidery. Cross stitch is often also used to fill in areas of embroidery and to create intricate patterns.

To create a cross stitch, bring your needle up through your fabric at the corner of the area where you want to place your cross, then go down diagonally across from where you started. Come back up diagonally across in the opposite direction and go down to complete the cross.

10. Blanket Stitch

The blanket stitch is so named because it was traditionally used to finish the edges of blankets. It is a decorative stitch that creates a series of neat interlocking stitches along the edge of a piece of fabric. It is sometimes used as a border or to attach pieces in an applique.

Starting from the edge of the fabric, make a straight stitch from the edge of the fabric inwards. With your non-needle hand, make sure there is a loop of thread and, when your needle comes up for the next stitch, ensure it is on the inside of the loop of thread from the previous stitch. Repeat this sequence to create a line of linked stitches along the edge of the fabric.

Mastering these 10 embroidery stitches will give you a great foundation and will enable you to have fun with many embroidery projects. Be kind to yourself; the key to neat stitches in embroidery is practice. Then practice some more!

Silk threads and vintage sewing ephemera make embroidery a sensory experience; Enter the Wildwoods

If you do any embroidery, we’d love to hear about your experiences and see your photos, so please share them here in the comments and on our Facebook page.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you ever tried embroidery? Have you experimented with different types of stitches, or types of thread? Have you created any special pieces of embroidery?

Did you know that postmenopausal women comprise the largest demographic group in America?

The ancient tripartite divisions of Maiden, Mother, and Crone have become even more relevant as the Crone stage now represents one third of our lifespan. For most of us the word Crone triggers the image of a bent old woman whereas that is just not what a mid-life woman looks like these days!

In fact, those years from 40 to 80 can be the years when many women come into their own and find their power. It’s the time when we can lift our head from those busy child rearing/career building years and start thinking about who we are and what we really want from the next part of our life.

It’s a time of reinvention, and for many women it’s a second chance of fulfilment.

So how about rebranding of those 3 stages of womanhood – to Maiden, Mother and Queen? Here are the 7 ways to find your path to power.

#1: Use Your Post-Menopausal Shift as a Gift!

The hormonal changes which we experience post menopause will influence our emotions, mood and behaviour. The reduction in our estrogen levels means that our focus will be less on nurturing and people pleasing and more on the external world. If we’ve had children, they have grown up and need us less, releasing time and energy for us to put ourselves first.

We care less about what people think about us and feel ready to take time to explore new horizons.

#2: Develop a New Career

No longer do we have to decide on a career at 21 and stick with it until we retire. Many people change careers several times during their lives. Even if you spent 20 years looking after your family and bringing up children, it’s not too late to take a training course and get qualified for an exciting new career.

Thanks to technology we can now work from home or even be a digital nomad as we travel around the world with our laptop!

If you are stuck for ideas, then get some vocational guidance from a counsellor.

#3: Find Your Passion!

If you are an empty nester or have retired from your job, you will need to find something that lights you up and makes you eager to get up in the morning. Human beings are not wired to do nothing all day. We all need to feel busy and useful if we are going to keep our happy brain chemicals triggered.

Get an idea of the huge range of interests that people have by browsing meetup.com or sign up for one of the thousands of online courses on udemy.com. Browse the thousands of podcasts available in Apple and Spotify. Check out the opportunities for volunteering in your area. Volunteering actually lights up the same pleasure pathways in your brain as drugs, sex and alcohol!

If you still struggle to find your passion, then book a session with a life coach. Your coach is your thinking partner, and few things are more powerful than having someone “in your story with you.”

#4: Go Alcohol Free!

During the “Mother” stage many women get exhausted running around after their families, and, if we are working, we have a boss to keep happy as well! We become “people pleasers” and get used to putting ourselves last. At the end of (another) hectic day we long for the quick fix that a glass of wine can give us. Over the years that glass can easily become several glasses or even a bottle.

Drinking through menopause will not only worsen our symptoms but it will sap our energy and motivation to try new interests and make the most of becoming a Queen!

At Tribe Sober we say that Sobriety is our Superpower – it enables us to redirect our energy into building a life we don’t want to escape from!

More and more people are not drinking alcohol. People are waking up to the fact that alcohol accelerates ageing and is linked to 7 different types of cancer. Alternatives don’t have to mean soft drinks laden with sugar as there are many delicious alcohol-free alternatives available these days.

#5: Resolve Your Issues

Many women find themselves drinking more during menopause and the theory is that unresolved issues get highlighted during this period. A good analogy is a house with cracked walls. You can paper over those cracks for years, but the menopause is like a shift in the ground below the house.

This will highlight the cracks so that you can no longer ignore them. If you are used to drinking to self-medicate to cope with these issues, then you may find yourself drinking even more during your post-menopausal years.

Instead of resorting to alcohol to numb your pain, join a sobriety community to help you quit drinking. As you begin to thrive in your alcohol-free life, you will be able to explore any unresolved issues with a therapist and begin to heal.

It’s all part of your strategy to put yourself first and become a Queen!

#6: Focus on Your Health

Alcohol damages our gut and overburdens our liver. Our liver is like a dustbin and one of its many jobs is de-activating hormones – old hormones. If it can’t do that then we may end up with too much estrogen floating around which will cause an imbalance and put us at risk of estrogen driven breast cancer.

None of us will get out of here alive but the goal should be to stay as healthy for as long as possible. Eat well and exercise daily. Medical science is advancing at lightning speed, and we can get detailed diagnostic scans of practically every part of our body these days. We can even get feedback on our gut microbiome which plays a big role in our health.

Giving up alcohol is one of the best things we can do for our health and happiness as we age. Here are Six Reasons to Quit Drinking at 60.

#7: Get Connected!

Many studies have highlighted the importance of social connections as we age. Maintaining connections or making new ones may seem more daunting the older we get, but, in fact, retirement is the perfect time to try new things and build a whole new network of friends.

If you are struggling with alcohol dependence or simply sober curious you may be interested in joining Tribe Sober community of Queens, many of whom have quit drinking and stepped into their power. Come join us and get inspired! Sixty and Me readers can get a 20% discount on Annual Membership by using the coupon “sixty” when they sign up.

Check out our latest podcast episode called Sober Queens on Apple and Spotify.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you heard of the 3 stages of womanhood – maiden, mother and crone? Do you agree that rebranding Crone to Queen is appropriate for the modern age? Have you stepped into your power? What are you doing with your post-menopausal years? Are you still loving your career? Have you found your passion? Does alcohol feature in your life? Are you sober curious and looking to connect with some Sober Queens?

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Originally posted at: Ubah Hassan’s White Cutout Maxi Shirt Dress

Here I sit, tucked away in a quiet, distant corner of Orlando airport, waiting to board a flight to London, ready to start my new life: yet again. My emotional swings have been crazy today; I awakened full of beans, excited, optimistic for my new chapter to begin, absolutely convinced that the shock waves of my divorce two years ago were finally behind me, and the ripple effect of extreme highs and crushing lows was now firmly in the rear view mirror.

But no, it took just a momentary peek in the mirror to deflate my new found confidence. I see a woman of 64 who has been living overseas for most of her adult years, and is embarking upon a self-imposed new life back home in Blighty, and it’s daunting.

I’m a little scared.

My life has been a rollercoaster for the past 30 months, since that awful day we mutually agreed it was time to go our separate ways. We had become one of those dreaded statistics of husband and wife living separate lives and simply drifting apart. I knew it was the right decision, but I’ve been adrift ever since, searching for my equilibrium, and I still haven’t found it.

Following My Heart

So, I made a very important decision. I realized that I must go back to the fold of my nurturing lifelong friends, the very small remaining family I have left, the country that holds the key to my soul, and the good memories and nostalgia that I crave.

I must get on this flight today and be courageous, otherwise I am in danger of spiraling into overwhelming sadness that I may find it too hard to climb back from. I must put my two feet firmly on English soil, and find the old me, the me that was always full of joie de vivre, the life and soul of the party, the gregarious version.

It’s imperative that I find the old Wendy before the new empty, unfulfilled Wendy gets a vine like grip, and won’t let go.

It’s been too long since I was hugged, since I made a man’s eyes light up when I walked into the room, since I received a bunch of beautiful flowers, since I didn’t have to be brave and make all the decisions on my own all of the time. It’s simply been too long.

And I wonder how many of you have experienced this? It is not so easy to share our sorrow and our insecurities, is it?

I did not envision, and certainly did not want to be facing the world in my seventh decade as a newly single woman. I practice an Attitude of Gratitude every day, because there are too many wonderful events that have graced my life, and most importantly, I am super healthy. I don’t want to portray a woman steeped in gloom, because I am not.

There is just a void in my life, and I can’t seem to find my way to fill it. Yet I am optimistic that this latest huge life change will nourish my soul.

Pursuing My Solution

I’m keen to share my journey with you ladies in the coming months if I may, as I negotiate my new life back in the UK. There will inevitably be down times, amazing new experiences, laughter, tears, and lots of cuddles with my two new cats that I have been manifesting for many months now. I can’t wait for cat purrs, and fishy kisses!

I would be thrilled to have you connect with me in the comments, if you so wish, or follow me from afar if you so desire. May I ask you for a virtual hug or to virtually hold my hand every once in a while? It would mean the world to me, and I would be happy to reciprocate. Certainly, I have learned that bottling up such raw emotion is detrimental: sharing is cathartic.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you had life-altering experiences that you may like to share? Maybe you are currently facing your own set of unique challenges? Do you think divorce in earlier years is easier to move on from than gray divorce?