misstitch

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ stitch

Noun

misstitch (plural misstitches)

1. An improperly sewn stitch.
   • 1869, Metta Fuller Victor, The Figure Eight:

     Some kind of embroidery occupied her fingers, and if she sometimes made a misstitch from the tears which dimmed her eyes, she patiently wiped them away and began again.

   • 1901, John Trotwood Moore, A Summer Hymnal: A Romance of Tennessee, page 108:

     Miss Cynthia winced, made two misstitches, but worked on.

   • 2010, Marion Moore Hill, Deadly Will:

     On the yellow silk sofa, scrawny Hepzibah made a misstitch on her sampler, and Mother Prudence made her take it out.

   • 2019, Melissa de la Cruz, All for One, page 159:

     Emma's voice was direly earnest, but even so, she didn't look up from her needle, either because she was too nervous to meet Eliza's eye or because she didn't want to risk a misstitch.

Verb

misstitch (third-person singular simple present misstitches, present participle misstitching, simple past and past participle misstitched)

1. To make an error in stitching.
   • 1973, The Custom Look, page 192:

     Keep extra yarn available to replace strands that have been misstitched; ripping such misstitched strands out of a canvas invariably damages their fibers so they cannot be reused.

   • 2001, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, page 1513:

     Even when the two fields were misstitched intentionally with errors of ±50 or ±100 μm, noticeable dents or protuberances were not observed at the stitched parts, and when the boundaries were accurately superimposed, almost no stiching traces were observed.

   • 2008, Elle - Issues 273-275, page 175:

     I often think back on this moment and wonder if the interruptions had caused her to misstitch me in some fundamental way.