Supplies You’ll Need
You’ll need two or more items to be joined. For this demonstration, we’re using a couple of crocheted afghan squares; the same technique can be adapted to join many other types of items. Tapestry needle Yarn: Depending on what you are trying to achieve, you can use either a contrasting yarn or a yarn that matches your project. For the purposes of this tutorial, we chose a yarn that happens to be both contrasting and matching. The yarn contrasts with the darkest stitches on the outer edges of the afghan squares, yet matches the lightest color in the design. If you are making a one-color afghan, it’s nice to do the whipstitching in the same color as the rest of your afghan. If for some reason you want the whipstitching to stand out and contrast from the rest of the afghan, that’s a perfectly acceptable alternative. If you’re making a multicolored afghan, you’ll have to decide which color you think will look the nicest for joining the squares together.
Line up your squares so that you can stitch in the direction you want to go. We put one square on top of the other, with the spot to be seamed in the center. We will be stitching right to left but if you’re left-handed you can also stitch left to right if you’d prefer. Do whatever you feel most comfortable doing. We’re working through the back loop (the loop farthest away from us) on the lower square and the front loop (the loop closest to us) of the upper square. This is how we choose to stitch when we want to achieve a seam that is not overly bulky. If you want a heftier, stronger seam, you could choose to stitch through both loops on each square. Note that we are stitching with our yarn doubled, which actually creates two loose ends at each side. You don’t have to double the yarn, but you can if you want to. If you double your yarn, you’ll have a slightly sturdier seam, but you’ll use double the yarn and you’ll have more loose ends to weave in. If you stitch with a single length of yarn, the seam will be sleeker and you’ll have fewer loose ends to weave in. If for some reason, you’re only joining two squares, you could weave the ends in at this point. If you’re making an afghan, you’ll be joining more squares; in that case, you can continue using the same yarn to keep stitching the next set of squares that you want to add.
