1-2-3 Stitch....

What with all of the pre cooking I am doing for tomorrow, I only got six of the baskets stitched.

Anybody can do this. All of the stitching was done with either two or three strands of floss.

The piece of canvas that Tessie is holding shows the basic stitches. The simplest is the running stitch on the bottom. The first half (left side) is simply done by weaving the thread over and under the vertical rows. The second half was done by doing it twice. The second pass was done to fill in the in between stitches.

The second row is a diagonal stitch. Basically, this is the first half of a cross stitch. The second section shows the crosses that happen if you just go back the way that you came.

The third (top) row is diagonal stitches on every other X of the canvas. If you do this both ways, you wind up with a rickrack pattern or a simple line of hills and valleys.


The top row and the two end baskets on the second row are the ones that I did this morning. They definitely take up a lot less space than they did as components in the plastic bags.

I still have eight to go.

I thought that you would like to look at some of the finished ones in the basket shop.

If you enlarge the photo, you will be able to study the patterns. The only other stitch that I used is a back stitch for the edges of the two oval baskets on the bottom shelf. The white part is back stitch. Two threads forward and one thread back in front.

Now you know how easy it is. you can either do the stitching before you glue the canvas to the basket. I do it both ways...It just depends on the mood I am in when I start. There is another tutorial on these baskets elsewhere on the blog, under the heading "baskets". I think that it is about the first one, so you may have to go back a ways to get to it.

You can also use any stiff even weave fabric to do this. The bases are Woodsies. Have fun.

See you tomorrow.