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I have come to an area which requires couching I have watched some clips on utube and understand the concept. But now I have come to it I am really confused I hope I can explain this so you understand I thought I would back stitch the line then add a couch stitch, but how big do I do the stitch do I just keep it small or otherwise if it would span two squares, its hard to explain. Also do I do a couch stitch on every square?

I know geekishly (hope I spelt that right) can help as she has done this project.

I did each section as a continuous line, and then went back and did the couching over each hole. I'd come up in one hole, go over the thread then back down that same hole and so on and so forth until I made my way across the whole thing. So for the inner left side, I started at the top corner and worked my way down to the tail, then came back up couching the thread before moving across the inner top.

The way that I understand couching is that you lay the piece of thread (I've usually done it with gold metallic) along the front side of the stitched piece, along the line indicated on the chart. They you take another strand of thread, secure it to the bottom of the stitched piece in whatever your desired method is and use this thread to attach the top thread to the piece. I usually go every 5-6 stitches depending on how big the squares are and come up from the bottom on one side of the top thread and back down the same hole on the other side of the top thread and secure loosely so as to not pull the top thread down into the hole.


I hope that all make sense and helps... If not let me know and I can try to devices some visuals...

Thank you both, that makes complete sense now, I realise now where I was going wrong! Not laying the thread across but back stitching it before doing the couch stitch over it, as I couldn't use the same hole to go in and out of as there was nothing there to catch hold of. Will try later thank you for the help
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Thank you efhawks, that describes what I thought couching is, but I didn't think I could write it and make sense.

Started last night and all is going well, although a little bit trying with the metallic knotting etc, but its looking good

geekishly wrote:I did each section as a continuous line, and then went back and did the couching over each hole. I'd come up in one hole, go over the thread then back down that same hole and so on and so forth until I made my way across the whole thing. So for the inner left side, I started at the top corner and worked my way down to the tail, then came back up couching the thread before moving across the inner top.

This is how I do it too 8}