The Story of 400 Stitches
Yesterday I found a beautiful stitch, Knotted Pearl Stitch, in some books and online. One source was at Needle 'n Thread where Mary Corbet has an excellent video.
I set about stitching Knotted Pearl Stitch to try it out and took the pictures for my photo instructions for Sunday Stitch School. All went well, it was a lovely stitch.
However, something in the back of my mind kept nudging me: this is so familiar, where did I see this stitch before? Mary Corbet mentioned in her video that the stitch has another name, Reversed Palestrina Stitch, although she also stated that it is an incorrect name.
I checked but I have not worked on either a stitch called Knotted Pearl Stitch or on a Reverse Palestrina Stitch before. So why was it familiar?
Anyway, I enjoyed working on the stitch so much that I even did the homework! I was very pleased and went to bed, ready to publish my instructions for Sunday Stitch School the next day.
During the night, my brain didn't sleep, though. It worked out the mystery.
When I woke up this morning I realised that this is an old TAST stitch! I learned it 11 years ago under the name of Knotted Loop Stitch!
I have always been fond of embroidery and learned a lot from books. However, in 2012 I took part in Sharon Boggon's online project TAST for the first time.
TAST stands for Take A Stitch Tuesday. Every week a new stitch is introduced and taught.
Over several years, in total, I learned 155 TAST stitches. You can see them all if you click on the taps in the red blocks at the top of my blog.
Then in November of 2016, I started Sunday Stitch School, to quench my thirst for other unknown (to me) embroidery stitches. They are all listed under the tap framed in blue in the picture above. As of today, I have introduced 244 stitches.
So today's stitch would have been #245.
Let's see 155 TAST stitches + 245 Sunday Stitch School stitches = 400 stitches!
Many stitches have two or more names, so it is no wonder that the Knotted Pearl Stitch should also be called Reversed Palestrina Stitch and KNOTTED LOOP STITCH.
Here is a picture from the TAST Reference Chart of 2012.
So in the end, I HAD worked this stitch before and can NOT add it to my collection of Sunday Stitch School stitches.
I will have to undo my homework and look for another stitch for NEXT Sunday! It also means there will be no Friday Homework on March 17th.
Oh dear, what a lesson! It should have been a celebration of the 400 stitches learned over the last 11 years but became a reminder that it is hard to keep track of so many stitches.
Thank you for hanging in there and listening to my ramblings.
7 comments:
I am so impressed with how organized you are! Wow! Also, impressed how your brain solved the mystery while you slept.
Interesting that the stitch has such very different names. Who would have thought that embroiderers have to be detectives too?
You are great to remember! Different name, different stitch, I think.
When you consider that most of the books we grew up with offered an extremely limited palette of stitches, and never agreed on names for the few outliers, it's a real testament to your research that this hasn't happened before!
Your heartbeat was right.
And it was good to be able to remember.
Everyone is waiting for the celebration of 400 stitched even if it's a little ahead.
I think I remember doing this stitch with Tast
This happens all the time. People on different continents, or just different cities on the same continent, give a stitch 'their own' name. We poor mortals are then left to piece the evidence together. Now with the internet it is easier to compare images. It was harder when you had to source all the books. I'm glad you were able to remember where you had seen the stitch.
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