Raised cup stitch tutorial

Today I bring you a new stitch tutorial. Along with the lesson itself, I thought it would be nice to see where it can be used, so you will also see the process of stitching this little blueberry twig :)

To be honest, this stitch fascinated me from the first time I saw it in some pictures a long time ago. But when I tried to learn it, it didn't work so after a while I gave up, haha. Well, not really gave up... It's just that if something is not going right I tend to put it away until a better moment.

Looks like a “better moment' came yesterday, because that's when I stumbled upon this video and finally was enlightened on what I did wrong all this time :D

Turned out that I did the loops wrong! I thought that the principle of working this stitch is the same as raised buttonhole but it is actually different. So, a little tip before you dive into the tutorial – pay attention to how the loops are formed!

And, although I usually give you plain lessons and tutorials of stitches that you can use later however you like... this time I was so excited that I learned this stitch that I decided to practice it one more time by working a tiny miniature with it.

So now you have not just a raised cup stitch tutorial but also a blueberry twig tutorial! :)

I took a lot of pictures to make this lesson as detailed and clear as possible so the post is going to be long, you were warned!

Raised cup stitch tutorial

So, first of all, I doodled a tiny twig on my spare “draft” fabric.

Then I worked the twig and the leaves. Since it is not the focus of today's tutorial, I decided to not show it step by step. But I used satin stitch for the leaves and a loose split back stitch for the twig. I didn't want to use any textured stitches for leaves like fly stitch or cretan stitch because the berries were going to be textured already... so I kind of didn't want the leaves to steal attention :D

Now the fun part starts!

How to do raised cup stitch:

Step 1: Outline the shape with back stitch. Make your stitches consistent in size and not too big. My shape was rather small so I used 2 strands of thread. If you want to work a bigger shape, consider increasing the number of strands to make it faster and easier for yourself.

Step 2: Bring your needle back up between two back stitches. Slide the needle under one of these stitches, bring the working thread over the needle and then tuck it under the shaft. That's how you make the loop correct way.

When you practice more, you will probably find out the faster way of doing it. I make these loops with two fingers now, like when you do cast-on stitch :)

And then you pull the needle through.

Step 3:  Repeat this action over each of the back stitches in the outline. And let's call this row of loops the “first floor” of this raised cup.

Step 4: Our “first floor” is finished. Now we start doing the same but over the loops below.

And, depending on the shape and its size, you will need to work a few of these floors the same way until it will be time to start decreasing the number of loops so that the cup can close.

And to do that, simply skip through one loop-base when making a new one, like in the picture above.

Since my shapes were small, I actually started skipping every other loop already on the “second floor”.

Step 5: Now, there will come a time when your cup will look like this. If you continue working new floors of loops you are likely to get a cone shape and that's not really what we want, do we? So, instead, let's finish it here.

I do it like that: slide the needle under a loop on the opposite side and...

...simply insert the needle inside the cup. Just don't pull your needle too strongly to not distort the shape.

And here you have it!

This is what a plain raised cup looks like.

We are making blueberries today so you can add extra dots with french stitches right on top of the cups.

This is what the finished twig will look like!

I think it's really cute. And I really like the texture... I think I've already mentioned that I'm weak for these types of stitches even though I don't really use them often in my designs. I still like them and inshaAllah will find a way to implement in some way in future works :)

In the meantime, here is the Pinterest-friendly stitch tutorial that you can pin and save for later:

By the way, this tutorial can be easily adjusted for other berries and fruit too, even just by changing colors. I'm sure you will get some cool ideas! Have fun and stitch away!