Session 7: Chain Stitch & Daisy Stitch

Now we're going to learn the chain stitch and the daisy stitch or the lazy daisy stitch. Sometimes this is known as the split stitch. So again, I've drawn a line on my fabric to show me where I wanna make my stitches. You're gonna bring your needle up at the top of the line and pull through. Keep a finger back there on that. Now, to create the chain, you're gonna put your needle in at the top of that line again but not in the exact same hole, just like maybe a fiber or two over. And then you're gonna bring it down like so. When you bring it down, make sure that the floss is underneath the thread. Now you pull it through and there you have your first chain. Now, to create your next one, you're gonna do the same thing. You're gonna put it in right next to where your stitch is, pop your needle up just a little ways down that line, make sure your floss is underneath your needle, and pull it through. And you can see the chains are forming nice and evenly. Now, you see, I like to variegate which side I take, or vary, I should say, I like to vary which side I put my needle in on the floss that's in the stitch above. So on this one, I'm gonna go to the right of the floss, gonna bring it down, and I'm wrapping that floss back there behind it to keep it going and securing it, maybe, okay. And pop it back up on the right side like so. Then pull it through. And then on this one, I'm gonna put it just to the left of that floss, as such. And then make sure that the floss is wrapped under the needle and pull it through. This can also be known as the split stitch, and as you can see, you can pull too tight and then your little stitch becomes grumpy. So just pull it out until it's the exact size that you want it to be to fix it. Okay, so we went left last time, we'll go right this time. And there you go. So that's the chain stitch. Maybe we'll do one more, just to make sure you got a good look at it. So we're gonna go slightly to the left of that first stitch, into the fabric on the wrong side, back up, tuck our floss underneath, and pull it through. So there you go, it's not that hard. Once you're finished stitching a chain stitch, which you can use this to outline things or just create a cute chain texture with it, you're gonna want to secure it by placing your needle just below that stitch that you're in and passing it through to the wrong side. And that's gonna hold that stitch in place and keep all the loops of the chain nice and secure and looking steady and ready. Now, a variation of this stitch is known as the lazy daisy or the daisy stitch. It's basically making a flower out of chain stitches. So, to do that, you're gonna bring, you wanna mark on your fabric eight little marks here. You can see they create kind of a compass, north, east, west, south, and then northeast, southeast, et cetera, northwest, southwest. So, we're going to bring our needle up towards the center of the stitch and then just carefully put it down. Oh, and then, put our needle in at the top of that stitch, but slightly over so that you're not going through the exact same hole but you're going maybe one fiber over. Bring it up at the bottom of the mark that you made. Make sure your floss is under your needle and then pull the needle through, creating the stitch. Now, to secure it, you put your needle down underneath that lazy daisy stitch and bring the needle up at the next stitch. So you can see I'm going down to secure that little petal and then I'm coming back up right here at the top of the next stitch. There you go. And then, we start up at the top again. We go right next door. And sometimes you need to untwist your thread so that it will work nicely for you. You bring your needle up, having put it through. There you go. So we're gonna put the floss under, as always. Okay and then secure it by just stitching down at the end again and pushing our needle up to the next point on the lazy daisy. Then we'll go down. We'll do maybe two more of these, just so you can make sure you understand kinda the flow of how it works. So it comes up, you secure a chain or a lazy daisy, put it down at the bottom, and bring it up at the top of the next one. Need a little more floss, okay. So this is a cute way to decorate something. I think it would be fun to maybe put some of these lazy daises on a scarf or on a hat as you work. And then you can see on this one that I just did, let me pull the thread through, I didn't keep my stitches very close together up at this top part, so that doesn't look like a completed chain. So I actually wanna pull that out, that stitch out and fix it, which I will do that. But that's how you proceed. So you just go all the way around and at the last one, all you do is put it through the end as you've been securing them, pull it to the wrong side, and secure your floss underneath your other stitches, as I showed you in the previous session. So, that is the chain stitch and the lazy daisy. Be sure to add these to your embroidery repertoire and we're about ready to move on to the next stitch, so stay tuned.