I have to say, I’m really enjoying participating in the weekly TAST Stitch Challenges. I’m learning about a whole lot of new stitches, some completely new to me, and others variations on stitches I have used before. And it’s challenging me to use a range of different threads. I haven’t bought any new ones, I’m just using what I have accumulated over the years. I don’t recall having purchased these threads with a specific project in mind, knowing me it would have been because they were ‘pretty’ or felt nice and soft!
This week’s stitch (now last week’s sorry!) is another completely new one to me. It builds up quite quickly, and the finished result is a lovely flower. I call it a rose, you might think of it as something else!
The majority of this stitch is worked on the fabric, by weaving your thread between your two foundation threads, laid in the shape of a cross. One thing I will say from the outset is that this stitch uses a lot of thread. I found I was cutting my thread lengths quite long, but I was still a little short.
To work the stitch, you create a cross the size you want your flower to be. I don’t know if it makes a difference, however I followed Sharon’s tutorial and placed the horizontal bar first. You then bring the thread to the front at the centre of the cross, and weave your thread around each bar of the cross, turning your work 90 degrees each time so you get the weave in the right direction. Another trick I found was to pull the thread away from the direction you are heading around the cross. This seemed to create a better effect with the thread joining each of the bars.
You can see from my first rose I didn’t weave in the right direction all the time – (I got a little lost with what I was doing!).
This is a good example of where I improved as I went along! My next couple of flowers are much better, and I certainly felt I had the hang of it after the first flower.
Again, I worked this stitch in a variegated thread, this time a silk thread by Colour Streams in Australia. It is a gorgeous thread! When you head over to Pintangle, you will see Sharon has worked this stitch in a variety of different threads, and one in ribbon, each giving lovely, though very different effects. The Colour Streams thread I used was easily divided into three ‘groups’ of strands, however each ‘group’ of strands from there then had another nine strands. Each of these is thinner than a DMC strand, but it was still a ‘bulky’ thread to use, similar to the thickness of an Appeltons wool strand, when using all nine thin strands, or one ‘group’. I really love the effect of the variegated thread in the rose, and am happy with the ‘thickness’ of the thread I used.
Have you used this stitch before? I’d love to know what you think of it, and how you have used it!
Apologies for taking so long to get this post up! Our internet has decided it is a much better option to not work than it is to work! Very frustrating!! After taking hours to load the photos, I’m finally starting to believe it might be working full time again which is good news!
TAST seems to be just what I’m looking for to get me back into embroidery and I’ve subscribed to Sharon’s blog. This looks a very interesting stitch and one I would like to try. You’ve done very well for a first attempt and its nice to see how you’ve improved with it.
I really like your idea of using a design from an adult colouring book rather than doing a sampler, so I’m off to look for something suitable online.
It is a really fantastic way of building skills and trying new stitches and threads. I hope you enjoy it! Whilst the colouring book idea might be a little limiting in some ways it’s keeping me interested and excited about it! Have fun with the book and new or old stitches!
Really lovely stitch. I just watched a video showing how to do this, but the stitcher was stressing on how there should be an uneven number foundation stitch to give extra dimension to the flower.
How interesting about the uneven number of foundation stitches! I might give that a go. What video was it?