Chase Handcraft

Take a Stitch Tuesday week 8: Stem Stitch. Last week’s feather stitch challenge sparked a run of creativity, and along with a couple of cold Seattle days where actual sunlight poked through the drizzle helped push me into dreaming about spring.

So although it is February and I’m working on stitching a Christmas themed table runner through TAST, I ended up spending the week happily stitching a spring flower garden trellis. Things are not quite finished up, but I wanted to show the progress made so far. Stem stitch is used for most of the….well, um….stems. I also took my first venture into bullion knot roses, rose buds and cast-on stitch carnations, sweet peas, and all kinds of “pretend” spring flowers.

This past Saturday I splurged and took a trip to the local embroidery shop Threadneedle Street in Issaquah to pick up some Bohn Milliner needles. The Milliner needles made Bullions and Cast-on Stitches so much easier! And, of course, I had to splurge on floss and picked up a few hand-dyed Variegated Threads from the Caron Collection in Wildflowers. This was my first step into hand-dyed floss…..and I think it might be a one way road. The floss is beautiful and fun to work with! I’m not sure I can go back to regular Cotton Perle floss after this. 🙂

I won’t name all the stitches and floss, but mainly used DMC Cotton Perle #8 for Stem Stitch, Bullion Knots, Cast-on Stitch, French Knots, Detached Chain Stitch and some Fly Stitch leaves here and there.