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BOKHARA COUCHING

Have you ever looked at the back of a piece of basketweave, and admired its appearance? There is a way to make a true reverse basketweave that puts the basketweave pattern on top, but it is very tedious to do. You can achieve nearly the same look with more ease by following these diagrams for bokhara couching.

Like all couching stitches, you must first lay a long thread on the surface of the canvas, coming up through the canvas only at the beginning of the row, and going down into the canvas only at the end of the row.

After laying this long stitch, you begin to couch it down by make small stitches as shown in the next diagram:

You next lay another long stitch (these long stitches are made in every single horizontal canvas row).

This time the couching stitches will be staggered from where they were in the preceding row:

Here is what a larger area of this stitch pattern looks like - doesn't it look just like the back of basketweave?

This is a great stitch to use when you want to duplicate the look of woven cloth.

Bokhara couching can of course be done in other patterns than the above by varying the spacing of the couching stitches (the sky's the limit in terms of different variations that are possible).

Diagrams and text copyright 2005 Denise Davis, Threadneedle Street