Well this is a stitch I really enjoyed! It may just be my favourite TAST stitch of the year so far! Such a wonderful stitch that is easily worked up, and fills an area beautifully. And whilst I tried it only with the basic straight stitch as the foundation lines, Sharon has said in her tutorial that it is also very effective with other stitches such as detached chain stitch. I imagine this also means you can vary the effect of the filling stitches, and by creating larger weaved stitches, you could create some lovely white space created by the loops.
This is a lovely easy, ‘dreamy’ stitch, which is very soothing to stitch. Your first step is to stitch in your foundation stitches (as evenly as possible – you will see I didn’t succeed all that well on this front!). As I mentioned earlier, I chose to work it with straight stitches, but it could also be worked with any number of alternate stitches, as long as you can weave a thread under it.
The final step is to weave a second thread though these foundation stitches in a wave formation. The second row of weaving is a mirror image of the first, which gives this stitch its wonderful effect. I admit, there were times when I did get a little ‘lost’ on where my next row was starting, so I ‘drew’ with my needle where the stitches needed to sit to work out where I was starting. I imagine if you completed the stitch on a somewhat more ‘standard’ shape you wouldn’t have these problems that an elephant’s ear presented!
If I were to stitch it again, I would use more contrasting thread colours, as my two colours blend a little too much together – I now think a gold straight stitch would have looked fabulous!
I do recommend you give this stitch a go if you are in need of a filling stitch – it is really lovely, thank you Sharon!