Easy Tips to Make Your Sashiko Look Cute and Neat, Even for Beginners🪡

• Sashiko fabric: Made with a looser weave for easier stitching, so the needle and thread can pass through smoothly.
• Sashiko thread: Thicker than regular embroidery thread and gives a textured look.
• Sashiko needle: Slightly rounded tip with a larger eye for easy threading.
• Chaco pen: Used to draw patterns on the fabric.
• Ruler: Essential for drawing patterns.
• Sashiko template: A sheet with grid lines used for transferring sashiko patterns. It’s helpful to have.

Most sashiko patterns are very regular and repetitive.

Many people may wonder how they can draw such neat patterns, but actually, because the designs are so regular, they’re easier to draw accurately and neatly.

Usually, you use a ruler to make evenly spaced dots, then connect them like a dot-to-dot puzzle to create the pattern.

But if that process feels difficult, there’s a very useful item for you.

It’s called a sashiko template.

There are dot-type templates that let you create your own designs freely, and hitomezashi-type templates with ready-made patterns.

A recommended chaco pen is the extra-fine Chacoper Artist.

The ink flows smoothly, so you can draw detailed patterns accurately.

Another recommended chaco pen introduced in the workshop is the Clover Iron-Erasable Chaco Pen.

At first, it may seem like the ink is not showing much, but the lines gradually appear over time.

This pen can be used to draw patterns on popular sashiko fabric colors like navy and black.

Unlike embroidery, sashiko uses only running stitches! Basically, the patterns are made with straight stitches only.

This time, we’ll explain using a hitomezashi pattern.

Hitomezashi is a type of pattern made with regular repeating designs.

1. Stitch all the horizontal lines
2. Stitch the vertical lines
3. Stitch the diagonal lines (if there are any)
4. Done!

Following this order helps prevent the threads from getting messy and keeps the pattern looking clear.

To make your sashiko stitches look neat,

it’s important to “move the fabric.”

Instead of moving the needle up and down again and again, stitch several times at once and sew in one go. This helps keep the stitches even and neat.

It works well if you gather the fabric slightly while stitching.

【Tips for an Even Cleaner Finish】
Instead of stitching the whole row at once, leave the last stitch unstitched and bring the needle out from the front side there.
This helps prevent pulling the thread too tightly when you pull the needle through.

Once you try it yourself, you’ll notice a big difference in the finished look. Please give it a try!

Of course, sashiko is mainly about stitching, but there is actually another important step.

That step is “stretching the fabric”!

Let’s explain what that means.

As mentioned above, in sashiko, you usually pass the needle through several stitches at once instead of pulling it through one stitch at a time.

This makes the work more efficient.

However, when you pull the thread, you may accidentally pull too hard and gather the fabric.

If you keep stitching without noticing, you may finish and find wrinkles and puckering in the fabric!

Here’s a tip to prevent that from happening.

Even though we call it a “tip,” the method is actually very simple.

Every time you pull the needle and thread through, gently stretch the fabric afterward.

Instead of simply pulling the fabric, hold the starting thread firmly and stretch only the fabric. That’s the key.

Doing this several times, not just once, will make your stitches look even neater.

Just keeping these two points in mind can make a big difference in how your project turns out.

The photo shows a piece stitched using the tips introduced in this article.

The stitches are straight, and there are no wrinkles in the fabric.

The finished stitching also has a soft and slightly raised look.

By focusing on making the front side neat, the back side also turned out beautifully.

One of the charms of sashiko is that the front and back can show different patterns.

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