I’ve been playing with several embroidery stitches lately, to add some tutorials and stitch ideas to the Stitch Fun series here on Needle ‘n Thread.
This latest stitch I’ve been playing with is, I think, one of those under-appreciated, not-often-used stitches, but it has great potential, especially because it’s easy!
There’s nothing complicated about it at all, and yet it yields results that rival some of the more complex braid stitches.
The sample above is worked in Soie Perlee. This particular sample is not the most attractive – the stitch works up better in cottons and wools as opposed to this type of silk. The silk is slippery and a bit on the boingy side, so it takes a little more work to get the stitch to hold its place.
This sample is worked with two strands of Fine d’Aubusson wool, and the clingy, rough nature of the wool holds the stitch much better.
I’m not trying to trick you or stump you, really! If you can name the stitch, that’s great – and if you can’t, that’s ok, too, because it’s not normally seen like this.
My point in asking if you can name this particular stitch is to illustrate how easy it is to alter the look of a stitch, simply by changing its spacing, both lengthwise and width-wise.
We can draw stitches out and make them longer and completely change the way they look. We can work them closer together than they normally would be, and again, achieve a completely different look!
We can make a stitch that would normally be wide, narrow. Or we can do the opposite – a stitch that would normally be narrow, we can make wide. And this changes the look of the stitch.
In changing the look of a stitch, we can also change its application.
If you look at the green wool example above, you can see that the stitch creates a nice braided line – similar to several more complicated braid stitches. And yet, this is a much simpler stitch, made up of familiar components.
The stitch would make a beautiful and dense stem, branch, vine and so forth in crewel work and other types of surface embroidery, don’t you think? But in its more commonly worked form – the way you’d see it in most stitch dictionaries – it doesn’t usually look like this!
So, can you name the stitch? Feel free to leave your insights below!
