thumbs up for even embroidery stitches

People regularly ask me for tips on how to achieve even stitches, and recently I wrote a post about "a stitch in time". Usually my best advice is to visualize the stitch length, take your time, and practice. Then, last week something popped up on the internet.

If you're on Pinterest and follow any stitchers, you may have seen a photo of a thumb with some markings, measuring out spacing on blanket stitch. Brilliant! But I did some searching and couldn't officially nail down the original source. I wish I knew who shared the idea, because I love it.

Since I've always worked primarily by eye, I thought I'd test out this tip and share my thoughts. I was doing some running stitch, and so I adapted the markings a bit to suit my needs.



First, I looked at how I typically hold my work and decided that it made more sense for me to mark my thumb tip, rather than the side of my thumb. Then, because I was doing running stitch, I added an extra mark that I could use for the gap between the stitches.

And guess what? It totally worked. Holding your marked thumb up as a gauge is a great help for getting even stitches. However, I also found that it slowed me down considerably. Sometimes that's what you need to do. If you have halfway decent stitching already, you may not want to bother, but if you struggle with even stitching, I'd say, give this a try!