This content created by Emily Hackbarth

Quick & Easy Square Stitch

Dateline: 05/03/97

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Square stitch is slow. Especially when you compare it to loom work which is a much faster way to get the same effect. There are many reasons why you might not want to use a loom for a certain project however. Off-loom weaving is more portable and there are none of those pesky warp threads to deal with. So I'm offering you an alternative. This version is faster than the standard version of square stitch, but still not as fast as loom work.

In these instructions I will refer to blue and red beads to correspond to the diagrams. Pick up one blue bead and tie it to the end of your thread. Go back through the bead once. Pick up five more blue beads to form your base row. Pick up one red bead and go through the last blue bead from front to back forming a loop with the red bead and the blue bead. Go through the back of the red bead and down through the next two blue beads in your base row.

Pick up a red bead and go through the back of the blue bead your thread is coming out of and the next two blue beads in the base row. Repeat until you get to the end.

Now it's time to fill in the gaps. Pick up a read bead and go forward through the last red bead you attached. Continue filling in the gaps until you reach the end of the row. To add further rows just treat the last completed row as if it were your base row.
Note: In this example we used an even number of beads which results in a "gap" at the end of the row, if we had used an odd number of beads we would simply go forward through the last red bead added before beginning to fill in the gaps.


Once you feel you've got the hang of it try this simple pattern. It makes an exceptionally elegant bracelet when worked in Japanese cylinder beads. Just repeat the block shown until you reach the correct length. Glossy white and pale sea green work well for this.

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