How to Stitch Thick and Thin Lettering: Back Stitch Font Tutorial

This font style — the one with elegant thin strokes and bold thick parts — is everywhere right now. And it looks way harder to stitch than it actually is. The trick? A back stitch for the thin parts, and an outlined-and-filled back stitch for the thick parts.

Here's exactly how to do it.

• Embroidery floss (I used 3 strands here)
• Embroidery needle
• Fabric (light color helps you see what you're doing)
• Your letter pattern drawn on the fabric

For the thin parts of your letters, you just do a straight back stitch. For the thick parts, you outline the letter shape with a back stitch, then fill it in with more rows of back stitching. The number of rows depends on how thick your letter's shading is. For most of these letters, I did an outline plus one more line of back stitching right down the middle.

Step 1: Start with the Thin Curve

Take your H. The curved part is thin, so bring your thread up through the back and start back stitching around the curve. When you hit a really tight curve, make your stitches shorter. Like, noticeably shorter. This keeps the curve smooth instead of looking like a polygon.

Step 2: Transition to the Thick Part

Once your letter starts getting thicker, stitch down one side of the line. When it narrows back down, go about one or two stitches into that thinner section to keep the flow going from your initial back stitch.

Step 3: Come Back Up the Other Side

Go back to where the letter gets thick again. Bring your needle up really close to that first line you stitched, then back stitch along the other side of the thick area. At the beginning, your two parallel stitches are going to be pretty close together — you want it to gradually widen, not jump.

Step 4: Fill the Middle

Now come back down the center and fill that gap with another row of back stitch. Don't start and stop each row in the same spot. If all your rows begin and end at the exact same place, your letter will look bumpy and unnatural. Stagger your stitches — make them different lengths on the inside. I've found that helps a lot.

Step 5: Don't Panic About Tiny Gaps

I'm using three strands of floss here. You'll see tiny white spots between stitches. It's not a big deal. Just use your needle to nudge the threads a little and they'll spread out to fill the gaps.

Step 6: Watch Your Back

When you're doing lettering, don't skip around on the back of your fabric. If you stitched all the way down here, don't jump back up there. With dark thread on light fabric, those long lines across the back will show through on the front. If you need to move to a different spot, stitch under your existing work on the back to travel the thread.

Here's how: if your thread is coming out up top but you want to start stitching lower down, just stitch under the back of your work, weaving through the stitches, until you get to where you want to be. Keeps things neat.

Step 7: Handle the End of the Line

When you reach a spot where you've already stitched, you have options. Test different things and see what looks right to you. You can continue the back stitch right over the existing line — I do that with stem stitch and it works great. But with these thick lines, stitching over them looks weird to me. So I just skip over that area and continue my back stitch on the other side.

Step 8: Start Each Letter at the Top

When you start a new letter or a new section, don't just go from wherever you ended. If you're stitching the letter A, start at the top point, come around, do the thick part, come back down the middle. Same as you did with the H.

Think about how you write the letter. You don't start in the middle and go up — you start at the top and go down. Same logic applies here, even though you're not stitching in the exact order you'd write.

That little thread traveling across the back from one part to another? It's fine as long as it's going to get covered by stitching later. So go ahead and travel your thread to where you need to start the next section.

This font is popular for a reason — it looks gorgeous stitched up. Just take it letter by letter, row by row, and stagger those stitches.