How to make a picot stitch

I've started crocheting doilies and I came across a lovely one from one of my grandmother's books that I just had to stitch. Unfortunately there are SO many picots in the pattern and it didn't do a very good job explaining it. I looked it up online and it was a help but I still had to come up with my own way to make the bobbles.

Here's a short tutorial for you on how to make a picot stitch. I hope it is clear and very helpful for you!

1. Here's my chain stitch waiting to make a single crochet in the little 3 chain loop near the middle of the picture. All the picots I looked up start with a single crochet. This one starts in the actual space made by the stitches, not in a stitch.


2. This picture shows the single crochet in the 3 chain loop.

3. To my knowledge, picots can have any number of chains, this one continues the stitch with a chain of 3.

4. Here, I've slipped my needle through the crossbar (horizontal) part of the single crochet as well as the left (front) thread. If you look back to the picture of the single crochet, you'll see it sort of looks like the Pi symbol. The 3 chain is beginning to pull into an arch leaning to the right.

5. Here, I've pulled the thread down and across, preparing it for my next stitch. I found you need to do this to make the bobble appear on the correct side of the pattern. You can see, it's pulled the chain of 3 closer into a cluster.

6. In the final photo, I'm showing you how I pulled the thread through the three loops that were on my hook. The thread had been pulled over the front and secured on the left side of the picot so when I pulled it through, it would keep the picot on the front side of my pattern.
I hope this was helpful, because after all the time I've spent doing these I've found that none of the tutorials that I read were actually intricate enough.

Enjoy!