Tutorial - Chained Cross Stitch

Here is a brief tutorial on this week's BAS stitch, the Chained Cross Stitch. Lots of pictures and not that many words so it should be clear. The Chained Cross Stitch has a regular straight stitch leg like normal cross stitch, but the other leg is a detached chain stitch - kind of cool!
So, as you can see in the picture above, you start with the straight stitch: needle up at the bottom and down at the top and to the right. Then bring it up again at the top above where you originally came up through the fabric.

On this cross stitch variation, you finish each "X" before moving on to the next, instead of going all the way across the row and then coming back all the way as you normally would.

For the second leg of the stitch you will come up at the bottom below where the first leg ended (the pictures are so much clearer than my words so go with the pictures! lol) As you pull your needle through make sure it goes over the thread, forming the detached chain stitch.

So, there you are - the first stitch is done!

For the next cross stitch take your needle to the top again, going down to the right and then back up next to where the first leg of the last stitch ended. This forms the straight stitch of the second cross stitch.

See - I told you it did! lol There is the straight stitch portion.

Now bring your needle up at the bottom below where that straight stitch ended. I use my trusty tiger tape to make sure I am lining things up properly. Carry on like that and complete the row. That should be it but as you will see below I ran into a problem and had to develop a "cheat" to fix it.

I'm not sure what my problem was but I suspect it was a combination of the slipperiness of the silk thread and the fact I didn't get all the twists in the thread properly relaxed. So, my detached chain stitches had a tendency to ride up the straight stitch. You'll notice I fixed the right portion of the seam but left the right side so you can see the difficulty I ran into.

So, here is the little "cheat" I developed to fix things. I worked my way back across the seam taking a tiny stitch to secure the bottom of each detached chain stitch where I wanted it to be.

Could I convince you I did this on purpose in order to teach you something further? lol - No, I didn't think you would fall for that!

Just another view of me fixing things above to make sure it is clear what I did.

And here is my finished row of Chained Cross Stitch. I really is kind a neat little stitch, isn't it? Now to see what else I can do to embellish it further...