I don't often buy embroidery books. Firstly, I have more than enough (!) and secondly, there seems to me to be a bit of a trend at the moment for publishing books which showcase someone's particular textile art/embroidery style but are somewhat lacking on the ways a reader (particularly a less experienced stitcher) could engage with it. Perhaps that's just me being grumpy though...
Anyway, something I have plenty of are books of stitches. And not only do I have a wide variety of those, as long as I have internet access, I can visit Mary Corbet's blog Needle n' Thread or the RSN Stitch Library for a reminder of how to work a stitch or what stitch might be useful in a certain context. So on paper it looks like the last book I would be buying is a stitch book, but all that went out of the window when I came across Sharon Boggon's book 'Creative Stitches for Contemporary Embroidery'. I think I have most, if not all of the stitches Sharon includes already in various stitch dictionaries, but what I don't have is her imaginative ways of tweaking and altering those stitches, not to make 'new' stitches but to make interesting and intricate patterns and designs by arranging the building blocks of simple stitches such as running stitch, herringbone, arrowhead stitch etc. in different ways.
She talks in her introduction about finding the 'play point' of each stitch; asking what if I...rotate it, layer it, elongate it, shorten it, tie it, thread it, whip it, lace it... Once you get into that mindset, the possibilities are endless and I was keen to give it a try. I chose herringbone stitch because as well as standard herringbone she gives a few other variations and as I'd chose an A4 sized piece of evenweave to work on, I suspected I was going to need a few extra play points.
The first five rows are all based on standard herringbone, using the same size and shape of stitch. The first row is layered in an offset design and the second is two rows worked mirrored with a single straight stitch in the gaps. The third is stacked layers which I then threaded and the fourth is mirrored like the second row but with vertical straight stitches from top to bottom of each herringbone, rather than in the gaps.
The heavyweight block of row 5 is a row of green herringbone and then a row of orange worked into the spaces. Under that is a simple row of standard herringbone but this one is laced. Finally, row 7 marks my departure from using the same size of herringbone and I've worked a row of tall thin stitches over which I've added a second row of short wide stitches.
Tied variations next. I went back to the original size and shape of stitch for row 8, which is three layered rows of pale green herringbone exactly as row 3, but I used a small cross stitch in a different thread to tie down each crossing point of the herringbone. Row 9 uses much smaller herringbones, both in height and width, again mirrored like row 2, but this time the crossing points are tied with a horizontal straight stitch.
Sharon gives Square Herringbone as another variant of the stitch and row 10 is a double row of Square Herringbone which touch side to side and top to bottom. This left quite a big row of spaces through the middle which I filled with two rows of very short, wide herringbone. I loved the stacked versions of the Square Herringbone so row 11 is a line of them, either worked right into the middle or omitting the last round which gives a neat square hole. Row 12 is a mash up of the very wide red herringbone in row 10, which I worked a bit taller and less wide, laced as in row 6.
I was fast approaching the bottom of the fabric by the point, but I wanted to try Herringbone Band, which was ordinary herringbone worked over a row of satin stitch. The standard version looked a bit tame, so I well and truly went for the 'play point' and created three rows of varying width satin stitch (in hindsight three strands of thread would have given me better coverage than two). I used the top and bottom of the satin stitch rows as the top and bottom of the random height and width herringbone stitches I worked over each band. I tied each crossing point with a cross stitch just to get it to sit a little more neatly. I still like the idea but I'm really not sure I like my execution! Lastly, row 14 is a herringbone variant which I've used in shadow work and which gives a double running stitch on the reverse side.
The finished sampler.
Plenty to still play with, I think!
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