Stitch Guide - Whip Stitch

I plan on posting more craft tutorials soon involving felt and hand stitching so I thought a wee stitch guide might be useful for people new to hand sewing. I found it quite hard to explain some of the stitches - I was trying not to make it too complicated! Hopefully my drawings will help. I will create a Stitch Guide page which I will be slowly adding to. Today we are starting with......

Whip Stitch:

Whip stitch is a great easy stitch to learn and it is designed to look a little ‘rustic’ so don’t worry about all the stitches being the same length or being evenly spaced - this is part of its charm. If you find blanket stitch or running stitch a bit tricky just use whip stitch instead.

To start:
Tie a knot in your thread.
Come up at starting point 1 and down at point 2, up at point 3 down at point 4 and so on.If you are whip stitching on a circle just follow the curve and start to angle the stitches as you go around. Refer diagram at top right.

Hint: Always stitch up through a single layer and down
through a double layer - that way you avoid pulling
tufts of the underneath colour through.

Stay tuned for Blanket Stitch - one of my very favourites!