Sunday 1 August 2021

Sunday Stitch School - Lesson 180: Fancy Stitch

Has this ever happened to you? Well, it has happened to me more than once. I see a stitch and think it is a new stitch, only to find it in a lot of the stitch dictionaries I already have and have looked at many times. Why didn't I noticed it before? What is it that made me so 'blind'? Is it the presentation in the books? Is the mood that I am in, I mean are there days when I'm not receptive to new things?

Anyway, I first noticed today's stitch in Fay Maxwell's book 'Crewel and Unusual'. After a quick search I found it in other books (e.g. Mary Thomas's and Mary Webb's) and on various websites I have visited often, and I am pretty sure I never took note of it before. It's a mystery to me.

The stitch is called Fancy Stitch, and is a nice filling stitch, slightly similar to Cloud Filling.


For really good pictures check out Kimberly Ouimet.

Mine are not as detailed, but here are my instructions for this filling stitch:

First use Running Stitch to make a grid of

vertical and horisontal stitches.


Change to a thread of contrasting colour
and come out at the left side of the
top vertical stitch.

Take the thread under the horisontal 
stitch and then the second vertical,
from right to left.

When you reach the bottom vertical
stitch, work your way upwards.

Now go from left to right.

At the top, anchor the stitch and

move to the second vertical stitch.
Continue in the same way,

until you have filled the grid.

The purple thread sits side by side under the horisontal stitches, but is crossed under the vertical stitches.

Homework:
Work the three samplers















6 comments:

Rachel said...

I can't really cast light on the problem of not seeing stitches you subsequently do see, except to confess that I suffer in the same way!

Janie said...

Fancy Stitch is good decorative and filler stitch, yes. And your tutorial and sample are excellent.
I know what you mean about noticing something for the first time when you realize it's been there for a while, it happens to me too.

Pamela said...

It does remind me of the cloud stitch. I like the orderliness of the grid.

crazyQstitcher said...

Lovely and easy. Quite often simple methods can produce a great outcome on our work

Lyn Warner said...

It looks like a bit like couching until you see how it's done. I think I would have skipped over it too without really noticing it.

Tanya said...

It is so pretty! A nice motif for Sunbonnet Sue?