Stitchers

Stitcher is a term used for a person who stitches fabric or other materials by hand or with sewing machines. The role appears across many crafts and industries, including clothing construction, embroidery, quilting, upholstery, and leatherworking. In factory settings, a stitcher may be assigned to assemble components or apply finishing stitches on a production line.

In textiles and fashion, stitchers perform a range of stitches (such as running, backstitch, overcast, and topstitch) and finish edges, join seams, and apply fasteners. They may work from patterns, cut materials, and use specialized tools such as sergers, sewing machines, and embroidery machines. Skilled stitchers coordinate with designers and quality-control staff to ensure fit and durability.

Outside textile work, the noun stitcher is not commonly used for medical professionals; the act of closing wounds is called suturing, performed by surgeons, physicians, or trained clinicians. The everyday term 'stitch' is used for both a seam and a wound closure, but practitioners are not typically called stitchers.

Stitchers is also the title of an American science fiction crime drama that aired from 2015 to 2017. The series follows a government program that recruits young 'stitchers' who can access memories of the deceased by linking into their nervous systems in order to solve crimes.

In digital imaging, image stitching combines several photographs into a single panorama; a person or software component performing this operation can be described as a stitcher in informal usage, though 'image-stitching' is the standard term.