You might call this splitting hairs – going into too much detail over something that seems to matter little – but it’s a question that comes up often, so it’s probably worth addressing briefly.

This is the question: when you work the split stitch in hand embroidery, does it really matter from which direction you split the stitch?

Most split stitch directions will tell you to split up into the stitch from underneath it. But, you might argue, as long as you’re splitting the stitch, does it really matter all that much? Can’t you split from the top, which is much easier to accomplish because you can see right where your needle’s going?

To answer the question, I’m going to take the middle path: it depends…