Tutorial: How to Sashiko Stitch, part 3, order of stitching, carrying threads or not, and and things to avoid

Continuing Sashiko tutorial, this is part 3
(Note: There are 4 parts to this tutorial. In an effort to make it easier to find these parts I'm putting the links for all 4 here, plus a link for if you are starting stitching with a pre-printed (wash out) Sashiko design. I hope this will make navigating to them easier.
This time we look at
- where Sashiko stitches cross intersections or meet at angles,
- the 'order of stitching' in Sashiko designs,
- when to carry threads on the back of your Sashiko stitching,
- and some things you want to avoid in Sashiko stitching.
This is the Sashiko design we are using for this tutorial. In parts one and two we transferred the design to the fabric, learned to start stitching without a knot, decided on our stitch length, and learned to turn a good corner. And just to review, we grasped the importance of leaving some slack in our threads on the back of our project, right?
If you didn't finish stitching around the outer line of the design do that now.

When you stitch the crossing diagonal lines you will space your stitches over the intersection as shown in the photograph, being careful not to catch your needle in the stitch that ended in the intersection.
This will come easily after a couple intersections as it is what common sense makes you want to do anyway.



- stitches that are unusually long or very short (compared to the rest of your stitches),
- stitches that catch into another stitch,
- stitches that run into intersections or beyond the line they are meeting
- stitches in places that should be empty, like the center of flax leaf designs.

Now you are set to finish all the diamond wave stitching. I'll write one more blog to cover the specifics of stitching the dragonfly, but really you already know everything about how to do it that you need to know :-)
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