And after a few weeks of playing catch up, I’m back on track with the weekly TAST challenge!
This week’s stitch was Barb stitch. It feels like an adaption of buttonhole stitch, and is easy to work if you can stitch buttonhole stitch.
The biggest challenge I faced with this stitch was where to place it on my ‘sampler’ – my elephant. I had at first thought to place the stitch on the outside circle of the Vandyke stitch, but that just didn’t really ‘work’, so I opted instead to decorate the legs further. I thought it might have been a chance to start work on the trunk, but I couldn’t see that working terribly successfully either.
Now, I’m not entirely sure if I have worked a ‘true’ Barb stitch, as I have alternated between long and short lengths of each stitch. You can see in the below photo where I worked one leg with the alternating method, and one with all stitches being the same length. Whilst I ended up unpicking both of these attempts, I found I was more drawn to the alternating lengths of the stitches, I just needed to ‘tidy it up’ a bit.
Probably my biggest challenge with this stitch wasn’t actually the the stitch itself, but rather the direction the stitches took to flow in the direction of the elephant’s legs. Sometimes I got it right and sometimes I got it wrong!
You will also see in the finished version of my attempt that I changed the weaving thread from the original one I chose. I felt it was all a little bit too similar with the main colour, and decided to go to the same thread I stitched the Vandyke stitch in to weave.
When looking at these stitches, for some reason they look messy to me. And I’m not sure why I can’t get them to look nice and neat! I understood the stitch and didn’t have any problems actually stitching it, however I do need to work on getting the stitch much neater.
Another great stitch for the repertoire! This is another stithc that could work really well for a border, but it could also be used in a number of other places, with lots of different effects being achieved. I just need to work on getting the stitch neater.
How did you find this stitch? I’d love to know what you thought of it and how you think you could use it!
That looks lovely Catherine. I am very impressed with your sampler and the placement of your stitches.
Thanks Jessica. I’m having fun working and thinking about what stitches to use and what threads to use. My first delve into anything other than following a design!