Difference between Catch and Herringbone Stitches per AOK

[Tobinn]

I am diligently and slowly working my way through a first reading of AOK and absorbing advice provided through this forum and a plethora of YouTube videos.

I am learning to sew and am practicing stitching.

I am stuck on two stitches - similar, I think, but distinct.

The AOK notes, among several, two stitches; the catch and herringbone.

I have found these videos on the Catch Stitch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-HE1lDNO8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDdk7HZoiMI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmpMoEFrjM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi5c7UnEA0w

None of these seem the same as the Catch Stitch as presented in AOK.

These are videos on the Herringbone Stitch that I've found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JyFBXtsO34
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm3Jk6fcnxA

The videos on the catch and herringbone stitch seem very similar to each other but, as I noted, the catch stitch shown in AOK appears to be distinct from either of these stitches.

Any advice or direction or more appropriate videos would be welcome.

As always - thanks!!

Mark

[Steve Ashton]

Just for clarity do you mean "The Art of Kiltmaking"? Also known as TAoK?

The catch stitch and the Herringbone stitch are fundamentally the same. It is how they are used that makes them different.\

The Catch Stitch - Also known as the Blind Hem Stitch is uses to finish a hem where the stitches do not show on the outside or right side of the fabric.



The Herringbone stitch is primarily a decorative stitch meant to be seen.

][

[Tobinn]

Ahh, yes, I dropped the "T" - I am referring to The Art of Kiltmaking.

Your explanation of the difference is what I was thinking but the illustration in Appendix A for the catch stitch seems to show a stitch that's different from the catch stitch. I think it's showing a method of joining two pieces of fabric together with stitches that will not be seen from either side; when snugged the two pieces are drawn together and the bulk of the stitches will end up being sandwiched between the fabrics. I don't want to scan and post the illustration without permission, though.

[Steve Ashton]

What page please. And do you havethe first or second printing?

[Tobinn]

Second Printing 2007
Appendix A; Page 119

[The Wizard of BC]

I teach that there are very few stitches that one needs to make a kilt.

The Fell Stitch also known as the Edge Stitch, the Running Stitch and about a dozen other names.



This is the stitch you use to sew the pleats. The goal is to create totally invisible stitches. You keep the stitch length very small with equal tension on every stitch.
This is how you sew two or more layers of fabric to each other, face to face right along an edge.




This is also the stitch used to do a fabric join if you use a Flat Fell Seam.





I use a slight modification of the Fell or Running stitch to sew my liner.

[



The Catch Stitch, also known as the Herrinbone Stitch, the Blind Hem Stitch and about a dozen other names.



This is the stitch used on the apron facings and the apron tips.
This is how my apron facings are sewn. This is different than Barb teaches.



And for the little turn up for the apron tips.





The Pick Stitch.



This is the stitch you use to do the apron fringe or anywhere you need to sew two or more layers of fabric face to face but cannot sew right on the edge like sewing a pleat.



This stitch is sewn just inside of the edge of the fabric and leaves a small line of divots behind. You can sometimes see pick stitches along the edge of jacket lapels.

I use the Pick Stitch to sew the bottom on my apron facings.





The Pad Stitch

This stitch is used to sew the interfacing and the stabilizer into the kilt.
The goal is to fasten one fabric to another allowing for some give.

Pad stitches unlike Tailors basting stay in the garment.
There are many types and styles of pad stitching.

My method



Barb's method



Pad Stitching the interfacing



In the above photo you see stitches in black thread and also white thread.

The black stitches are Pad Stitches and the white are Tailor's Basting.

The difference is that Pad Stitches do not go all the way through to the outside and stay in the garment. They anchor the interfacing.
Tailors Basting temporarily hold layers in their correct position and relation while pressing and are removed afterwards.

Tailor's Basting and the Pleat Basting Stitch is used like pins. To temporarily hold layers of fabric together during other steps like pressing. Basting stitches do not leave lumps like pins do so is the preferred method.

Pleat basting.






The last is not really a stitch per say but a way of sewing the straps into the kilt. The only requirement is that strap stitching must be very strong.

[Tobinn]

So...more than one way to skin the proverbial cat!

I suspected as much as that's the case with most things but I just wanted to make sure.

I have taken your previous advice and gone ahead and bought a sampler of needles, inexpensive thread (red) on sale, some remnant cloth (white), thimble and even a little tomato pin cushion just like my mom used to have (that one is more for the sentimental value, I suppose).

I sit down in the evening and practice stitching. I have to tell you, it's very zen; I look up after a "few" minutes and an hour has gone by. I'm really enjoying the learning process.

I'm slowly going through TAoK and I have to keep reminding myself not to get too overwhelmed (so many steps!) - that making a kilt is much like eating an elephant; one bite at a time (or so the old saying goes).

The further I get through the book (I'm just past pleating) the more amazed I am at how complicated a garment a well-made kilt is. Just a few short months ago when I was just starting my research on buying a kilt I thought, "How hard can it be to make one? It's a shmata with some pleats and a buckle." Oh well, live and learn.

Thanks so much for your in depth responses, advice and photos and all.

Another question; do you have a preferred method of adding thread as you're stitching? I've already learned that stitching with more than about 18" or so of thread can lead to tangles.

I've found a couple of examples, most seem to focus in the context of beading.

[The Wizard of BC]

Yes, Tobinn,

Not only, more than one way to push a needle through fabric, there are many different ways a kilt can, and have, been constructed.

I have been honored to see and examine some of the oldest kilts in museums. I have also had many different kilts made by many different makers in my shop.

I have seen kilts with about every way imaginable used to fasten them on. Straps and buckles like we see today, buttons, fabric and ribbon ties, pins of all sorts, and even some where there is a single strap that goes all the way around the back forming a belt.

]

Prior to WWI there was no standard way of making a kilt. Each maker was trying to find a way to make his or her product stand out from the rest. They tried everything they could think of.
Some ways worked and have been adopted and other ways did not work and were abandoned.

You can all remember this military kilt that came into my shop a few years ago. It was made by Gordon & Sons who are who taught Elsie, who taught Barb.
We hold the older military kilts up as the epitome of what a kilt should be and yet the construction failed.



I have seen kilts with no internal construction, that we consider necessary today, at all. Today we would call these ladies skirts.
I have seen just about every way to fold fabric into pleats that anyone has every tried.

I bring this up in my book in the chapter "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants". Not one of us who makes kilts today are doing anything that has not been tried, at sometime, by one of the thousands of talented kiltmakers, over the past 200 years. We are all following in the footsteps of, and learning from, those who went before us.

[Lady Grey]

Sshhhhhh...... a little secret......

You don’t have to follow the book exactly.

In regards to stitches, a couple of us at Kamp were very experienced stitchers, we didn’t do things exactly as the book said or as Barb demonstrated as for us some things were counter intuitive to what we had been doing for years.

As I remarked “we’re arriving at the same destination via a different route”

My pad stitches are completely different to both Barb’s & Steve’s But it does the exact same thing and most importantly it has the same strength in the right places as I checked with the guru!

If you’re having zen time with stitches also try some cross stitching or hand quilting for some variety.

[Pleater]

There is probably some succinct word in Latin, or perhaps it needs Greek, that means 'it must hold' - that is what your stitching has to do above all else.
Although I had access to a sewing machine from an early age - I repaired the leather belt on my grandmother's treadle machine and used it to make all sorts of things, there is a certain quality - Zen or whatever, to hand sewing, or to making anything by hand really - I have lots of knitting machines but I still knit by hand.

Pleating is a very ancient method of controlling fullness, the reeds of smocks, the skirts of doublets, Elizabethan ruffs and those huge skirts, - or making a full sleeve fit into a cuff, shaping a cap or bonnet, even creating a fan.
The fell of a kilt is a specialised variation as it is shaped within the pleats.
I think that is why the military kilt failed - the dominant stripes were kept in the centre of the pleat and then the fabric was cut just slightly too close to the stitching and drifting across the grain, which removed the stability of the weaving.
The oldest kilts would not have been shaped or cut, it would have been against reason to destroy the work put into the fabric - scissors able to cut it would not have been commonplace, and the concept of tailoring for a close fit had not yet arrived.