Presenting my finished (I think), feather stitch sampler for week three of the Take a Stitch on Tuesday stitch-along. I expected to it would take a lot longer to finish but I didn’t realise feather stitch seaweed was so addictive 🙂
It was my intention to create a “negative space” fish in amongst the feather stitch seaweed and I don’t think it worked in that respect. I do like it though, which is why I stopped before the negative space experiment was successful.
I learnt two important things about stitching the background rather than the subject.
1: In order for it to work, the background stitching needs to be really dense. More like this section on the top of the tail.
It would probably work much better with a denser stitch like satin or stem stitch filling, although if I worked it with those the sample would be much smaller! Hmm, maybe I should add some beads to it.
and 2: Filling in the missing bits of stitches you can’t complete in the “proper” way is really important to stop the stitching looking skimpy. I added a few straight stitches in the image below to visually finish a section of maidenhair stitch.
I guess there’s a third thing I learnt too. I love working feather stitch. It’s very rhythmic and soothing.
Some useful links:
TAST on Facebook
Sharron’s TAST FAQ on her website, Pintangle.
Free vintage stitch book downloads.
I think it did work. What would make it better would be to add stitching behind the feather stitch to give it depth. It could even be feather stitch but finer and paler and probably smaller. I love your feather stitches though.