TAST week 2: buttonhole stitch

English name: buttonhole stitch, blanket stitch (or not as some say it's the same, others that it's not -- se e.g. this link)

Swedish name: langettstygn, langettsöm

Oh, I'm a big fan of langett and have used it many times. Even for things it might not be intended such as mending clothes with ripped seams. I like that it's so fast and easy, I almost forget to stop once I get going.

I'm hoping to do some more this weekend as I've so far only stitched on counted fabric this time and would like to do some more "free form" stitches too. The aida used is actually scraps cut off from a larger, mounted embroidery (one of my mum's), which I've saved for something like 15+ years, stored together with my aida squares. There you see -- never throw away things. They might come in handy one day.

I've dabbled with several different variations here. Some, like the crossed bars and the version with detached chain stitches, are variations I've seen in books or online. Others are just ideas that popped into my head. The two rows with fly stitches in the first pic was just an idea that I thought would be fun to try: what if I try to incorporate last week's stitch in to one of the variations of this week's stitch? Wonder if it'll be possible to do the same thing for the rest of the weeks?

I'm not going to describe how I made all the variations, but if you wonder about any of them in particular, I'll do my best to describe how it's stitched. You just have to ask. It's also possible to click the pics for close-ups so you can see more of the details.

The eyelash yarn is not couched, which is possible to do with buttonhole/blanket stitches, but woven into the "bars" of the buttonhole stitches. I saw that being called darned or woven buttonhole stitch in and old UK or US embroidery pamphlet I downloaded from the Net.

This is one of the stitches I tried in my doodling sessions this autumn. Below you can see the variations I tried there. Because I did a lot of different stitches on that piece of christmas red aida, you can see a few other stitches too, but it's mainly buttonhole/blanket stitch variations.

My favourites here are probably the "multiple row" ones in the first pic. Especially the one with the offset rows.


Buttonhole or blanket stitch is always fun. Almost always easy. And very useful, be it in embroidery or for edgings. In my mind, it never gets boring as you can always find a new variation. Or if not, the sheer usefulness combined with the simplicity makes it a pleasure to use in it's basic variation too.

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What is TAST?
Take a Stitch Tuesday is a weekly embroidery challenge throughout the year by Sharon of Pin Tangle. You can read more about it here (or by clicking the TAST badge to the right).

To see what others have done in this stitch, check out the comments in this post on Pin Tangle.