2 Easy Ways To Do The Padded Satin Stitch

The padded satin stitch is a fill stitch that is part of the satin stitch family. It is great to use for areas you want to add a bit more dimension to, as the stitches are more prominent and stand off of the fabric more. Because of it’s 3-dimensional quality, it’s considered a staple stitch in stumpwork embroidery.

The name is exactly as it suggests: this stitch has layers of stitches that pad the surface stitches. You don’t need a ton of embroidery thread to achieve a fluffy look to your embroidery! In this tutorial I only used 4 strands at a time.

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Variations of Padded Satin Stitches

There are several different ways to go about making this stitch. You can make groups of satin stitches and layer them on top of one another, or you can fill in the shape entirely with split stitches, seed stitches, or stem stitches before you fill in the shape with satin stitches. This post will show you a few different approaches.

Padded Satin Stitch Using Layers of Satin Stitches

This first way creates somewhat of a dome-like appearance on the fabric because the center of the shape will have the most layers of stitches. It’s great for spherical shapes, but can be used with any other shape as well.

For this example, I omitted stitching along the outline, but you can split stitch the outline of the shape before you get started to create a guide that will help keep the edges of the stitches neat.

• Make a group of stitches in the center of the desired shape. Do not fill in the entire shape. You’ll want to leave a margin of empty space between these stitches and the outline.
• Begin making stitches over top of the first area you just stitched. Make these stitches going in the exact opposite direction than you first stitched. (i.e. if you made the first group of stitches vertical, make these diagonal or horizontal this time) This will allow the stitches to sit on top of the existing stitches nicely. Again, don’t fill in the shape completely yet.
• Finally, make more stitches on top of the existing stitches, again going the opposite direction as the last layer of stitches and fill in the rest of the shape. You should now have a nice 3-dimensional shape.

You can make as many layers as you would like within the shape depending on how prominent you want the stitches to be.

Padded Satin Stitch Using Split Stitches

This next method for padding the satin stitch is one that will create a prominent shape whose surface is even throughout. This is because you will fill the entire shape in with a fill stitch before stitching over it with satin stitches. Whatever stitch you use is purely preference.

Play around with a few of these to see which ones you like the best:

• split stitch
• stem stitch
• seed stitch

• Split stitch the outline of the shape.
• Fill in the entire shape with a fill stitch. (For the example, I used split stitch.) These should generally run in the opposite direction than the direction you plan to fill the satin stitches in.
• Make stitches over top of the fill stitches, filling the shape in entirely.