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With hand embroidery, sometimes you’ll want to fill an area with color but you don’t want the texture of a stitched area – or you don’t want to take the time.

One possibility in those situations is to fill the area with colored pencils or crayons. In this video I show you how to stabilize the fabric for coloring, and how to heat set it after you’re done.

Here’s the finished piece I started in the video.

I really love to do an all-dark outline when I color the fill. To me it has a playful, cartoony look that suits my drawing style.

By the way – that dark outline looks like black, but it’s really DMC #3371. That’s a very dark brown and I use it a lot of places you’d expect to see black. I think black outlines and eyes can sometimes look a little harsh. Using this color takes the edge off.

The free Vroom Vroom pattern uses the same coloring technique, but I match the outline thread to the fill color. It’s a different look and one you’ll also want to have in your tool basket.

And here’s a totally different look on that same car – colored and stitched by my daughter.

Finally, for just one more fun look, here’s a set of three Easter chicks colored by my daughter.

The one in the top left corner is made with the free Little Chick with Big Feet embroidery pattern. The rest are from the Chickens embroidery pattern.

So much fun!!!

Here are all my lessons for fill stitches (besides satin stitch).

• satin stitch
• satin stitching points
• seed stitch
• long & short stitch
• split stitch used as a fill stitch
• Turkey work
• using colored pencils or crayons with embroidery

Return to the Learn to Embroider main Table of Contents.

Move on to the lessons for all the other stitches.