Next up in our Stitch Directory is Chain Stitch. Chain stitch is a very simple, but very effective stitch. It can be used both as an outline stitch and also as a filling stitch.
Bring your thread up through your fabric at the top of the line you want to cover. Hold it down on your material with your left thumb and then insert your needle back down through the fabric through the exact spot where it first emerged.
Bring the point out again a short distance away along the line, looping your thread underneath your needle as shown in the diagram above. Pull your thread through and continue working your chain in the same way.
Chain stitch produces a line of back-stitching on the reverse of your work and is used as a line border stitch, or as a filling stitch (worked in close rows or concentric shapes) and as a padding when you want to produce raised effects.
A fun and easy way to vary your chain stitch is to whip it with either a matching or contrasting thread – see the diagram above. The whipping thread doesn’t enter your fabric at all, except at the beginning and end of the line of stitching.
I do hope that you’ve found this post useful, pop back next week when we’ll be looking at Cross Stitch!
*If you missed last week’s post about Bullion Stitch you can find it here.*
Leave a Reply