Sewing - The Catch Stitch

Dawn Anderson: Hi! I'm Dawn Anderson and I'm showing you how to sew by hand. Right now, we're going to work on sewing the catch stitch. The catch stitch is very similar to a cross-stitch. It has overlapping diagonal stitches on the top side, as you can see here and then on the reverse side, again it has very small nearly invisible stitches.

To begin go ahead and cut your thread approximately 18 inches long. Thread your needle and tie a knot in one end. With the catch stitch, were actually going to start on the left side which is opposite of the stitch sequences that we've done previously. It does start similar to the previous stitches we come up from the underside edge and what you're going to do is take your first diagonal stitch across the folded edge here. You're only going to pick up again a small amount of thread because this would be the finish side and then pull your thread through, come across, take up a small amount on the folded edge and pull that through and you can see how the crosses are beginning to form.

The catch stitch is used for all types of hand sewing. You can use it as a hemstitch on satin and I also use it to hem sew and interfacing and hair canvas for traditional hand tailoring. The catch stitch can also be used to secure pleats on the inside of a skirt and for circular hems. On the top side, you can see the nice angled diagonal stitches here and I'm going to flip it over and show you the very small stitches on the reverse, as you can see here. Now if this again was matching color thread, you wouldn't see it at all. When you use the catch stitch to sew in your interfacing your seam would actually go right along this edge and hide what tiny bit of stitches you could see. So, again it's a great invisible stitch.

Now, to knot off your catch stitch, go ahead and knot it from the folded edge, tie your knot, put your thumb there, pull it tight and snip your thread and that is the catch stitch.

Now let's move on to sewing the buttonhole stitch.