This is proving a lovely steady relaxing stitch and working up quite quickly now I'm heading for the centre. Last time I posted I had just added the eighth stitch: feather stitch with an added a sprinkling of beads and it looked like this:
Following the open nature of the feather stitch I wanted a more solid stitch for the next round, so I chose Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch and a wonderful soft variegated silk thread. Great thread, but completely wrong for this stitch. Something this project has reiterated is how much the look of a stitch is dependent on the texture of the thread, especially the more sculptural knotted stitches.
The softness of the silk thread meant that the caterpillar-like wraps of Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch were completely lost and it looked a lumpy mess. So out with the silk and back to a perle cotton, which showed up the wraps as I wanted.
The next stitch was heavy chain, which had been successfully used by a couple of other members of the Stitch Zone group. Mindful of the issues I'd already had with the previous stitch, I went for a tightly twisted mercerised cotton so I could slide the needle easily behind the stitch loops. It's a nicely weighty stitch and it gave me another good solid line. I worked the chain stitches very short, so it ended up looking like a braid, which I really like.
Next, a more open stitch and a completely new one for me, courtesy of my Mary Thomas book. This one is called Knotted Cable Chain Stitch and is a bit of a cheat, as the chain loops aren't full loops - the bottom part of the loop comes out from under the knot, which you can see in the photo below. But once I got into the rhythm, which is always the initial hurdle with stitches that have multiple stages, I enjoyed working it and it certainly stitched up a lot faster than either of the two previous rows.
Lastly in this week's stitching, threaded running stitch, which I chose for the opportunity to use some stranded cotton, even if it was only for threading.
So, about two thirds done and all down hill from here!
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