The basket-weave stitch belongs to the family of tent stitches that include others like the continental and half cross. Along with the continental stitch it is one of the most common stitches that are used in needlepoint. The stitch is worked in a diagonal manner and when you start doing the stitch you will wonder why the name has been given to the stitch. This is mainly because of the patter that forms on the reverse side of the canvas that looks like a basket weave. The sturdiness of the basket-weave on the reverse helps in the resulting project being extremely immune to wear and tear.

The needle needs to be brought towards the top from the bottom left hole of the target intersection and then taken back inside the canvas from top right hole. The needle needs to be brought up from the diagonal upper left hole to then complete the row. The next row of stitches will need to be worked in the opposite direction.

In case you are not so comfortable moving in the opposite direction, you can turn the canvas upside down so that you continue to work in the same direction with the canvas turned the other way around. If you turn the canvas and look at the opposite side of the canvas you will see that the stitches form a basket-weave pattern.

The basket-weave stitch is a close stitch and in case you want to make the same stitch larger than the size of the canvas you can use a larger square area to cover one single stitch. However, make sure that you do so with all the rows to ensure consistency.