Simple Stitches

This is what just one page of my notebook looks like.

If you do this, you need to make your diagrams nice and clear. Bear in mind that over the years the pages will fade and yellow (as you can see), if you use only pencil then you'll find your hard work disappears over time, eventually even pen will fade, but you can extend its life nowadays by using the plastic pockets produced for ring binders to protect your pages, or one of those neat pocketed folders.

Of course, one of the advantages of using plastic pockets is that you can put two A4 sheets back to back in one pocket and they are easily removable for reference while working. Most of my pages are hole-punched for the ring binder and even those with strengthening around the punched holes show considerable signs of wear, indeed, some are torn through at the holes and in danger of becoming lost, as you may be able to see in the pic above.

Cable chain is a stitch which will stretch but because of the small backstitch in between the loops it will not unravel. Work in the same way as the chain stitch except that when you bring the needle up through the loop, you make a small stitch over the end, similar to the Lazy Daisy below, and come back up through the fabric just behind the forward end to form the small backstitch.

This stitch can be dressed up as a very fancy little stitch, something you might want to try with other stitches as well, by interlacing two rows of stitching with either the same or a contrasting thread.

Interlaced Cable.