I was not able to find good instructions on making a two color coptic stitch, so I decided to make my own. This stitch can be used to make edge decoratons for self-bound books. I used some cardboard to show the stitch and a white and a brown string.

The cardboard has you keep the orientation. You will need two needles, otherwise you will have to switch between strings continuously. a red and a white side to help

Tie a square knot into the end of the two strings and pull one end through your cardboard (it helps to have made some even spaced holes first…)

Make a loop with the string you pulled through (the white one in my case) the hole and enter the same hole from the same side again.

You should get something that looks like the above pictures. Now take the other string, go over the cardboard and over the white loop and then with the needle under the loop, but over the brown string.

Then pass the needle through the cardboard in the opposite direction that the white string went through. You should get a loop looking like in the picture.

Make sure you keep your strings pulled reasonably tight, otherwise it will not look right.

Now take the white string again. Go over the cardboard and backwards underneath the place where the brown string forms an X.

Pull the string through and keep going in the original direction – pull the string through the carboard again in the same direction as before. You will get another loop like the brown one.

Now we continue with the brown one, the same way. The only difference is that we go the other direction. I.e. with the white string we always go starting from the white side of the cardboard and entering the hole in the red one, and with the brown string we start at the red side and enter at the white side. I went through the second hole here, but you can just as well go through the same one, depending on how many loops per hole you want.

Now we just keep going the same way until we either reach the end of our project or the end of our strings, in which case we need to tie the strings together.

We will want to end on the same side as the initial knot is – which will probably be the back side of your project and in my case is the red side of the cardboard. It works best finishing on a hole that already has a few strings going through. I take the white string and stitch the loop like I wood regularly, but instead of entering the carborad on the red side I slip the string underneath the already in place strings from the hole and pull tight.

Now I have both the white and the brown string on the same side of thecarborad and can tie a square knot in them.

The pictures should explain the process better than the words so at the bottom you will find a high-res image of the picture seeries that you can download, without any text interruptions.

Hope this helps someone :)

Cheers