New (Old) Techniques

I love to do many types of crafts. One of the things I enjoy making are items with plastic canvas, and  I have made many different things. One thing that I don't much care for, though, is just using a whipstitch to join 2 pieces together, such as the edges of a tissue box cover, for example. The simply whipstitch seemed too sparse of a coverage for the 2 pieces of plastic, and you can see through to the plastic. It also doesn't seem like a very strong connection, either, as I usually can feel the 2 plastic edges moving/grinding against each other.

To try to strengthen the two sides, I tried doing a second pass of whipstitch the other direction, but the results was rather crude looking and kinda bulky.

So, since there didn't really seem to be another viable alternative, I followed all the directions and tutorials I had always read before and just used the plain old whipstitch.


Fast forward now, to a couple years ago. I was going through some of my old booklets, and I have an old tissue box pattern booklet with several designs. As I was putting it aside to pick up the next booklet, something caught my eye. I picked it up again and this time studied the pictures.
All of the tissue box covers in this booklet had the sides joined together with what looked like braiding! I immediately opened and scoured the booklet and learned the secrets of this technique. I have since used it on several items I have made. I vastly prefer it to a simple whipstitch and use it whenever I can in place of it!


Fast forward again to today! As I was talking with a crafting buddy of mine, TinkerCrafter, we got onto the subject of plastic canvas. I got to thinking about this braided technique, and I suggested it to her. She was interested, so I started looking for a tutorial or instructions on how to do this. To my surprise, I couldn't find anything! This is by no means an new technique! The booklet I learned it from was published in 1981!
Then I got to thinking. This is something that I could make up a tutorial for, myself! I had never really thought of doing a tutorial for anything in the past, as there are so many out there for anything I could think of. Finally, I have one for me to do myself!

When I got home from work tonight, I grabbed a couple scraps of plastic and some yarn and my camera (phone), and I got to work. My next post will be the tutorial (I don't want to drag this post out any longer than necessary)!