hello and welcome to my video where I will show you how to hand sew the whip stitch whip stitches are visible diagonal stitches that lie an equal distance apart there are quite a few different uses for the whip stitch one use is to apply the whip stitch along a raw fabric edge to help prevent unraveling of that fabric this is very similar to an overcast stitch on a sewing machine another use of the whip stitch is to join a seam usually it's used to join up the small hole that's left in a seam after stuffing a pillow or a toy the alternative to this is the invisible or ladder stitch which is a bit more fiddly than the whip stitch but it is invisible so depending on the final finish you want you can choose between those two types of stitch another popular use of the whip stitch is the mend tears in clothing you can also use the whip stitch to join together knitted seams so if your in turn it into two knitted parts together then the whip stitch can also be used for that because the whip stitch is a visible stitch most people use a matching thread ie a thread that matches the color of the fabric they're using in order to try and blend it in however if you're particularly neat at doing the whip stitch you can use a contrasting color of thread instead and turn it into more of a decorative detail today I'm going to use some crochet thread in size eight and some white felt to demonstrate the whip stitch I'm going to show you how to use the whip stitch to join a seam together in this case I'm using felt which doesn't fray at the edges and so is an ideal choice for joining together in this manner if you're using fabrics that do fray then simply hem the raw edges for before then joining those hems together with the whip stitch I'm using a leather needle just because it's nice and pointy and good for going through felt but you can use any sharp hand sewing needle you like so the first thing to do is put a knot in one end of the thread and then thread the other end through the needle before you start make sure that you align the fabric edges that you want to sew together and then keep them pinched between your fingers and thumbs just to keep those edges lined up throughout the idea of the whip stitch is to use it as close to the fabric edge as you possibly can without compromising the strength of the fabric you can get away with making the whip stitches longer the thicker the fabric you are using so for using with felt you can make the stitches fairly long for thin and fine fabrics you want to make sure that the stitches are short and the other thing to bear in mind is that the closer the stitches are together the stronger that seam will be also bear in mind that if you're sewing up a stuffed item like a stuffed toy then you want the stitches close together so that the stuffing does not escape so the first thing you do is take your thread from between the layers of fabric and out the back this is simply to hold the knot between the fabric layers you then move your needle to the front of the fabric and then enter the fabric again from the front making sure that you keep the stitch length consistent every time if you are struggling with this you can use a piece of washi tape or masking tape on the fabric which is parallel to the edge and that will act as a guide so you can see where to put the needle into the fabric each time so not only do you need to push the needle through both layers of fabric the same distance from the edge of the fabric each time but you also need to move slightly to the right and this movement to the right has to be the same every time as well however it's just something that comes with practice see you then push the needle through at that point and you go through both layers making sure that you go straight through and not through at an angle this is particularly important when you're pushing a needle through thick fabrics and then you simply repeat that stitch all the way along so you take your needle back to the front again and push it through the fabric that same distance from the fabric edge again and also move slightly to the right once more also note that when you're tightening the thread don't pull it so tight that you distort the fabric edge so I just keep going through the felt and then back to the front again each time aiming to spacer stitches an equal distance apart I'm just making my stitches a little shorter here and closer to the edge just to show you how close you can get without it compromising the strength personally I wouldn't go any shorter than this or any closer to the edge than this I was curious about if you could add beads to a whipstitch edging so I gave it to go with some seed beads I just wanted to show you the result here you can see I've added two already and all you do is you just add the bead onto the needle in between doing the whip stitches see at the bead and then do a whip stitch as you can see the problem with adding a beaded border is that the beads are difficult to keep in place and keep them correctly positioned however if you really like this look then make sure that you have the stitches close together and as close to the fabric edge as possible because the longer the stitches are the more those beads can move around when you are ready to finish your stitching you do one last whip stitch but don't fully tighten the thread you then take your needle from right to left through that loop of thread once and then twice and pull tight you can leave it like that but I like to make extra sure by taking the needle under that stitch between the fabric layers again making a loop just higher and take the needle through and pull tight to make another knot in order to hide that knot inside the fabric layers you simply take the needle between the pieces of fabric and then push it out the back like so you then remove the needle and the end of the thread will now be between the fabric pieces and there you go that's the whip stitch and now I'm going to move on to show you how to use a whip stitch to sew a hem instead of a seam so on this fabric here I've folded over the raw edge and pressed it with an iron and I then repeated that step by folding the fabric over again and pressing to hold it in place the reason I folded it over twice is because this fabric phrase and so by folding it over twice I encase the raw edge which is the bit that's going to unravel within the hem this keeps the raw edge hidden I'm now going to sew along the edge of this hem to attach it to the fabric below in this example I'm going to be using a regular hand sewing needle and a regular sewing thread once I've used the whip stitch to sew the hem I'll show you a blind hem stitch as well just for comparison purposes the blind hem stitch is a great alternative to the whip stitch in this sort of situation but I just want to show you the difference and how to do them both well I've been researching this video I've seen the whip stitch called the blind hem stitch and the blind hem stitch called the whip stitch and they seem to be a lot of variations that are all called the same thing and it's quite confusing but the main thing is that you use the correct hand sewing stitch for the correct job so as long as you know the difference between the different stitches and what they can be used for then that's all you need to know as before the thinner the fabric you're using or the stronger you want the seam or hem to be they're closer together you want your stitches and once again you want to space them out as evenly as possible because hem stitches can be seen from the front you obviously want it to be very neat and you want as little thread to be visible on the front of your sewing project as possible and these two techniques allow a minimal amount of thread to be shown on the front the first thing you do is put a knot in one end of the thread and then thread the other end through a needle and then take the needle up through the very start of the hem right near the folded edge this will hide the knot between the layers of fabric next thing you have to do is decide how far apart you want your stitches to be you then move the needle that distance downwards along the hem you then pick up a little bit of the underlying fabric with your needle and then push the needle up through the hem now when you pick up the underlying fabric you want to put your needle into the fabric as close to the edge of the hem as possible when you push the needle up through the hem again you want to do that as close to the folded edge as you possibly can the wider you make the stitches the more visible they will be from the front of the fabric in these first examples I go quite close to the folded edge but not as close as I possibly can do and I'll show you the difference this makes in a little bit then you do exactly the same thing so you move the same distance downwards again along the hem pick up a little bit of the underlying fabric as little as possible right next to the folded edge and then take the needle directly across and up through that hem and then you just repeat that over and over trying to space the stitches as evenly as possible so you move the needle along the hem again pick up a little bit of the underlying fabric and then move the needle straight across and up through the hem note that in order to make these stitches you kind of fold the fabric back on itself along that hem edge if I show you the front of the fabric now you can see how much thread is visible from the front as you can see there's only a small amount with most of them being very even it is set for one which is a lot shorter obviously the aim really is the them all are short and there's almost invisible as this one that's the aim I'm now going to aim to make very short stitches so I'm going to go into the fabric very close to the edge of the hem and also and in particular come up through the hem very close to the folded edge so I'm just doing one and you can see from the front how that looks and then another it's just a case of practice and also just being careful to not pick up too much fabric with your needle in each stitch I'm now going to move on to the blind hem stitch so once the needle has left the top of the hem I take the needle and position it parallel to the hem edge placing the needle as close to the edge of the hem as possible I pick up a tiny amount of fabric in this demo you can see that the needle goes parallel to the edge of the hem and picks up only a few threads of the fabric that's what you're aiming for you're aiming to pick up as little fabric as possible without the stitch being too weak you then move your needle along the hem the same distance as you did for the first part of the stitch and then push the needle up through the hem again very close to the folded edge and that's one blind hem stitch from the front you can see that there is hardly any thread visible and then you repeat that and see you move the needle down the hem the same distance as before you pick up a very small amount of fabric right next to the folded edge and then you move your needle down along the hem again by that same distance once more and come up through the edge of that hem as you can see there's a lot less thread visible and exposed from this side of the fabric compared to the whip stitch so even though the whip stitch might be quicker and maybe a little bit easier I do think the blind hem stitch is better in this kind of scenario because sewing a hem is specifically what the blind hem stitch has been designed for and I just think it looks neater from both sides of the fabric I'm now going to do one more blind hem stitch and then I'm going to show you how to finish off so once you've come up through the hem on that last stitch you then use your needle to pick up a little bit of fabric right next to the folded edge on the underlying fabric and then go straight across up through the hem again as close as possible to where the needle last left that hem pull the thread until there's just one small loop of thread and then put the needle through that loop once and then once more and then pull tacked you can then cut off the excess thread and you finished your stitching I'm just going to repeat that step one more time partly to show you I'm partly just to make sure that the thread definitely will not come undone I cut off the excess thread and then it's finished so there you go that's what it looks like when you sew a hem with a whip stitch or a blind hem stitch in comparison to the whip stitch I did before I find the blind hem stitch easier to control I also find it easier to get consistent results and from the front it's often a lot less visible than the whip stitch so if you want to find a neater finish then the blind hem stitch will be the one you choose obviously when you're hemming you'll be using a thread that is in a matching color to the fabric and so these two stitches will be even more hard to see on the front of your work I'm quickly going to show you a clip of where I used a whip stitch on our recent projects I did which was some curtains just so you can see a real-life example of where you would use this stitch there was just one small section at the bottom of the curtains where I needed to sew down ahem so I just did a quick whip stitch and you can see the result here the fabrics I used for the curtains were quite thick and also the underlying fabric was doubly thick it was a double layer this enabled me to space the stitches fairly far apart and none of the thread was visible from the front of the curtains because I was able to pick up just the top layer of the underlying fabric with my needle each time so in each stitch I only put the needle through the top layer of that underlying fabric so this made it a truly invisible stitch and that's why I didn't even need to use a blind hem stitch I could just use a whip stitch and that worry so much about the neatness because there was a double layer of quite thick fabric and so no thread was going to be visible from the front ok so that's the end of the video I really hope you found it useful and thank you very much for watching