How to Do Back Stitches in Cross Stitching

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Vickie Pavone on behalf of Expert Village. In this series we'll be talking about the basics of cross stitching. In this segment, we're going to show the basic cross stitch called the back stitch. This stitch is used to outline your pictures to make them show up nicer. It starts the same way, you come up through the back of the fabric, you pull it up through, hold it tightly on the end and then in this case, you're just going to go backwards from where you started. Now you started and went to the left, now you're going to go back to the right same line and put it down. This creates a nice line for a outline of your pattern. You can go diagonally on this one as well by just going up to the stitch that is diagonally across from where you started. You can make any kind of shape you want by going around the picture. These particular stitches as I said are used to outline. They're used a lot in your pictures like outlining to show off what it looks like. These letters, you can see the dark black stitch is your back stitch that outlines it and makes it beautiful. Or you can use it for just the letter itself, or a part of the letter to make it more fancy looking. That is your basic back stitch."