Russian Chain Stitch

The latest stitch on my 100 Stitches Plus list is this beautiful Russian Chain Stitch.

For my demonstration, I am using this perle cotton thread - DMC Color Variations #4025.

The Russian Chain Stitch is made up of three Lazy Daisy Stitches that are grouped together. The first Lazy Daisy is a vertical stitch:

The next Lazy Daisy is done at a diagonal:

  

   
and the third is done at an opposite diagonal: 

From the description this seems really easy to do doesn't it?  
Well I found it really hard to keep all of my Lazy Daisy Stitches the same size. 
After some trial and error, I drew guidelines on the fabric with a water soluble marking pen.   
My guidelines are a bit hard to see but I measured three parallel lines at 1/4" apart.  

I would definitely recommend guidelines - I was able to make a whole row of stitches that look really even in size and shape:

I found this stitch in the book Embroidery Stitches by Mary Webb.  She noted that this stitch may be done in horizontal rows or in vertical columns.  In either case, the first Lazy Daisy Stitch should be pointing upwards.