Old design Re-visited

I am re-visiting an 'old' design that I made years ago, in 2011. Some of my readers may recall this rectangular mat.

I am looking back at this with the intention of preparing the instructions for this mat.  I have looked back at it a few times before trying to think of the best way to prepare the instructions. I think I have figured it now.  But it is not a straight-forward share; I will be giving the instructions in several parts over a number of posts.

I am starting off by giving the pattern for the basic square of the mat, and the stitch count for it in the chart below.

The pattern requires two shuttles.  As a guide, if using size 40 thread, you'll need approximately 2.6m of thread in each shuttle. Make all the joining picots small. I count the join as the first half of the double stitch and continue with the second-half after the join.

As you can see, there are no picots on the outside to join to the next motifs to grow the mat. That will be explained in the coming posts.  Come back later to check the next steps.