If you already dabble in dimensional embroidery, you’re probably familiar with the drizzle stitch. It’s a fun little dimensional embroidery stitch.

Somewhat twisty, kind of bouncy – you can add instant personality to your drizzle stitch by topping it with a bead.

And today, I’ll show you how!

Aren’t they cute?!

The beaded drizzle stitch can be used anywhere you’d normally use a drizzle stitch, really – flower centers, individual unruly flowers made entirely from drizzle stitch, seaweed and grasses, or just dimensional clusters for the fun of it.

The trick here is to use a bead that has a large enough hole in it that will allow your embroidery thread (by itself, no needle) to easily pass through the whole. Sometimes, waxing the end of the thread will help it pass more easily through a bead without a needle, or you can just… yes…lick it.

For this tutorial, I’m using #12 perle cotton, a milliner (or straw) needle, and I have no idea what size beads. Just random beads out of an unlabeled vial.

You’ll start with the drizzle stitch. If you’re not familiar with the stitch, you might want to watch my drizzle stitch video.

Bring the thread to the front of the fabric, then insert your milliner needle, unthreaded, back into the fabric right where the thread emerged, or very close to where it emerged.

You can take the needle down in the same hole, or just a fabric thread away from the hole.

You might like to anchor your needle by using something on the back of it, like a little eraser, which we discussed earlier this week.

Anchoring the needle will help you avoid pulling it back out of the fabric as you work the cast-on stitches. It also weights the needle to help keep it upright.

Cast as many stitches as you want onto the needle. You can add beads to the ends of very long drizzle stitches, very short drizzle stitches, or anything in between!

Here are my cast-on stitches, all ready to go.

Now you add your bead to the thread. At this point, your needle is still unthreaded, so you need to thread the bead straight onto the thread, without using the needle.

You can wax the end of the thread, lick the end of the thread, or just twist the end of the thread. Whatever it takes to get the thread through the hole in the bead! It obviously helps to choose beads with large enough holes to accommodate the thread easily.

Move the bead in towards the cast on stitches and thread your needle.

Holding onto the wraps, pull the needle through the fabric slowly, to create the drizzle stitch, which will now be topped with your little bead.

See what I mean? Instant personality!

If you like this stitch and you want to find instruction for other fun stitches, you’ll find plenty of hand embroidery stitch tutorials here on Needle ‘n Thread. Besides how-to videos for over 75 embroidery stitches, there are over 60 Stitch Fun tutorials that explore more obscure stitches, combinations, composites, and little tips and techniques to add a little more fun to your stitching. You can also find an alphabetical index of embroidery stitches available here.