I have heard the term used every now and then, and though I am certain I have heard it being applied, I’m not certain if I would recognize it as being such…soooooo, what is it, how is it done and why…hungry minds must know, and my mind has been starving for years!! 
Please discuss.
Peter nails it with his description in this post:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?p=207878
Go to Clips and Snips and scroll down to Ken Rickett’s tunes. His B pipes pronounce them pretty clearly.
Speaking of Clips and Snips, I hadn’t been there for a while, but Ben Walker does some nice stuff with his Cillian O’Briain chanter.
Joe,
I have a couple of recordings from tionols where eamonn and kieran demonstrated and described in detail exactly what is going on
a back stitched scale down from back d… notes in () are tight as in triplet form
d(gf)d-c#(gf)c#-b(gf)b-a(gf)a-g(ca)g-f#(ca)f#-e(ca)e-d
soak, rinse, repeat if necessary.
if you want i will put the mp3’s on line. just ask.
John, I would appreciate it immensely! I need a break in the routine from popping and rolling (sounds like classic Rock& Roll terminology… or what they used to tell us, in school, that we should do if we ever caught on fire), and figuring out a little backstitching would do that nicely. Actually, would it be possible to convert those recordings to CD and ‘snail’ them my way? They would be easier (I think 
) to take with me in the truck, portable player…what have you. If that is a doable thing I can PM you my snail address. Thanks man. 
Have a listen to the Patsy Touey archive album released NPU and you`ll hear touey use it everywhere.
Neill41, are there mp3 samples on the NPU site to listen to?
Joseph, there was a section of the recordings from the last Fl Tionol where Keiran demonstrated this. You should have this on CD already, I’ll see if I can locate the exact spot.
-gary
Cool, thanks Gary.
Amazing!!! 
To think I’ve been doing that for all these years and never known it to be ‘backstiching’. I’d always had it in my head it meant that little trill some do with their thumb on Back D. Maybe THAT should be called ‘back-sewing’ - kind of sounds like a highly strung sewing machine.
Cheers,
DavidG
Hold on guys n gals…there is a bit more 
what ye have above is the stitch ie..lower hand melody note then staccato CA then back to lower melody note or upper hand melody note with GF staccato then back to melody note…so far so, normal…
Now for the stitching which is why the term was applied,
Play the above but in a run of three melody notes.
So for eg…
GCAG:FCAF:ECAE: FandC are #
(the CA in this case being the back stitch)
Ye will notice that the above run covers one whole bar and a half bar,so finish the bar with DCA for eg to keep it tidy.
Remember to keep it within the fundamental rythm or it will totally disrupt the melody.
Not mentioned above is the bottom D stitch which is played slightly differently to the rest.
Pat Mitchell transcribes Touheys version as…
DGFA which is fine. .
I have found that DGFD also works well..
I learned the above frae Pat Mitchell in Miltown one year so thanks goeth to him.
..aff ye go and do some sewing…have fun 
Slan Go Foill
Uilliam
Thanks loads, Uilliam, for the clarification. I will proceed with care and diligence…and by the time I am finished backstitchng, I should have a really nice jumper for the cold Flodida winter…providing I don’t stitch my thumbs into the work. 
By the way, does it have to be strictly D(gf)D with staccato G followed by staccato F, or can it be F first then G as in D(fg)D, which is the way I feel more comfortable playing it? I mean you can’t actually make out the tone of the staccato notes that well anyway when played quickly like that so I guess it should’t really matter.
Cheers,
DavidG
David..as Peter rightly pointed out it is just a term applied to a flourish.normaly at the end o the piece,taken frae Patsy Touhey and Tom Busby…
I don’t suppose it matters if ye go up..call it something else..front stitching maybe!
Peters’ point about being cautious about using it is wise enough
Uilliam
…overdoing anything, but especially embellishments, takes away from the original melody of the tune…and it’s initials as an individually unique piece of music.
Touhey and Busby used backstitches all through their music. Touhey would sometimes finish a tune off with a grandiose series of ornaments - sometimes backstitches, sometimes, in a jig, a series of legato quadruplets - Miners of Wicklow for instance. It makes sense considering that Touhey was a stage performer, a showman.
Todd Denman asked Paddy Keenan about backstitching - which he uses in a few tunes, like the Harvest Home - he’d never heard the term before. It comes from Busby, who learned the pipes from Touhey’s friend Michael Carney, and Tom Morrison, a famous Galway flute player (Dunmore Lassies was popularized by his recording) who by the way recorded a jig in the 20’s called “The Piper’s Backstitch.”
My point was ofcourse that the ornament has taken on the name of the stitching up a tune with a flourish, or Touhey’s ‘great shower of fingers’, I don’t think before the Touhey book introduced the term it was connected with the ornament itself.
Is ‘stitch’ an older term for a cut or a short triplet. I remember reading something to that effect a while back but I forget where.
Tommy
i have never coem across that, is interesting to know though.
Backstitching is not limited to the ‘series’ of descending notes that get stitched up. Touhey throws backstitches in throughout his playing.