#self sewing

So to start off you need thread obviously, i’ll use black so its easy to see. Next you’ll need a sanitized needle. I can’t stress this enough. Be safe with your body stitching and make sure everything is sanitary. 

For needles I like to use something like these, 

So smaller embroidery/sewing needles should work. I also use a pair of small nail scissors like this. 

to cut my thread because it makes it easy to get the extra ends off of my thread when I tie it off. So what I mean is ill cut off these sections..

..right before the knots, so I don’t have a bunch of extra thread hanging around in the way. But don’t cut it to close to the knot or else it might come undone. 

One of the next biggest parts is threading and tying the knot on your thread. I already knew how to do this because I know how to sew but some of you may not so i’ll put a link to a video tutorial on how to do so. 

There are two ways to thread a needle, single or double. Now all other body stitching I've seen is single thread, I’ve done double a couple times cause I just thought it would work better, but i’d recommend single as a start.

This video shows single threading. 

This one shows double.

So next lets talk about where to body stitch. Most people do their hands or sometimes even feet, and that’s because those parts of your body are more calloused so there’s that layer of dead skin that you can work with. I’ve seen it on other parts of the body but I've never done it and i’d recommend using your hand if you’re a beginner. 

Now what I've found is that certain parts are more sensitive. I’ll insert a picture with the parts circled. 

So the center of your palm and those parts of your fingers (on all of them) the skin is kind of thinner and not quite as thick as the fattier parts of your hand. So If you’re worried about pain i’d avoid those sections. And i’m not saying all body stitching should hurt cause it shouldn’t hurt at all if you’re doing it rights, its just those are more sensitive areas and can hurt.

A good area to start is here. 

So now lets talk about the actual process. Like I mentioned it shouldn’t hurt, you aren’t supposed to go deep, it’s just in that top layer of skin. The only times I’ve felt pain is if I stitched in those more sensitive areas, or if I’ve messed up in one area to much and ripped the skin a lot in a very concentrated area. And the pain has never been much more then a bit of a lasting sting, so you should never be in excruciating pain. 

So to start stitching your essentially pushing through little sections of your skin. I have a short video kind of showing what you’re supposed to be doing I hope it makes sense. (Also I didn’t cut the extra thread off like I mention earlier, also I’m not sure if there is audio in this video but if there is it’s probably just rustling sorry.) 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9UUdOKkUT49THlfbnF6SVh0ajg/view?usp=sharing

As you can hopefully see i’m kind of pushing in and lifting up to essentially grab the skin. And you only need to do little sections, it’s not a continuous thread under your skin. I took an old pic of mine and so you what I mean. 

The white sections along the black thread is my skin and where the thread is. So that’s what i mean by the little sections. 

So essentially you’ll just do this in whatever design you want. Also what I’ve found easiest for curved parts is to have less space in between stitches.