St Petersburg stitch is something that I learnt before and then promptly forgot, much to my chargrin. So this time, I have drawn up a simple pictorial.
I specifically named the beads used as “Top Turning Bead”, “Bottom Turning Bead”, and “Body Bead”. This helps to understand and remember the construction of the St Petersburg stitch.
Construction Things to Remember
- The St Petersburg stitch is made up of top and bottom turnings to create the stitch: hence the “top” and “bottom” turning beads.
- The “body beads” denotes the number of beads used to make up each column. In the example above, I have used 3 “body” beads to make up a 3-beaded-column St Petersburg stitch.
You can easily vary the number of “body” beads but the x-number of body beads will be a repeating number of beads that you pick up, over and over again, as you bead this stitch.
Once you get the basic construction of St Petersburg stitch, then the variations you can ply on them will be pretty endless.
Samples of Single St Petersburg Stitch
Here are some samples. Because the stitch has tendency to curve (towards bottom-turning beads), one can effectively use larger beads for the top-turning beads (as per photo 2).
As you can see, the St Petersburg Stitch has a natural tendency to curve downwards (towards the bottom-turning beads). You can use this tendency to good advantage in various projects.
Here is another of the Single St Petersburg. It shows a single-bead spacing between each of the rows. And it remains very flexible.
Characteristics of the Single St Petersburg Stitch
- tendency to curve towards “bottom-turning” beads
- very flexible (along the columns)
Double St Petersburg Stitch
The double St Petersburg Stitch is also very popular and is easier to weave than on first impressions. If you get the basic construct of the stitch firmly in your head, it is even easier. You can then see ahead and know where you are going instead of blinding following along a 1-2-3 instructions.
The double St Petersburg Stitch is usually made of 2 separate pieces. The first is just the single St Petersburg, as per above.
Then you start the next piece at the same starting point (where you stop bead is). And you use the first piece’s “bottom turning beads” as the bottom-turning beads for your second piece – thereby joining them together to form a double St Petersburg.
Samples of Double St Petersburg Stitch
Characteristics of Double St Petersburg Stitch
- can fold along shared “bottom-turning” beads
- tendency to curve towards “bottom-turning” beads
- very flexible (along the columns)
Tutorials
Learn basic St. Petersburg Chain (from BeadAndButtonMag)
This tutorial shows both the single and double St Petersburg chain stitch.
Miyuki St. Petersburg Stitch (from JohnBeadCorp)
Presented by Leslie Rogalski. I like her videos. Especially the first part of the video when she uses graph paper and draws thread lines to demonstrate the beading. Very clear way of doing things. 👍
Some Ideas & Experimentation
And you can make use of its tendency to curve for various other interesting variations.
Here is an example of using taking advantage of the curving characteristics of St Petersburg Stitch: Squiggle Earrings with St Petersburg Stitch (CH0192)
