Monday, December 22, 2008

Back stitch . . .

. . . for the Stitchin fingers stitchalong.
If you follow the link above you will understand what this is all about. I'm very keen on this business of exploring surface stitches, and get on better with doing it in some kind of organised challenge type of thing. This stitchalong is ideal. A list of stitches is provided, there is free choice of stitch to work with and no deadline except the expectation of other participants that there will be regular examples to look at. So here is my first effort. I decided to work through the list picking a stitch from each letter of the alphabet. And have immediately broken my 'rule' by starting with B! Ok, ok.
I couldn't think of many really different things to do with back stitch, but tried varying length and thread, and also featuring the back of the stitch on the right side as it is rather interesting, like an untidy stem stitch. I've also done back stitch along chain stitch, and whipped and threaded lines of stitching, and put beads on. Haven't tried pekinese lacing yet. In the top pic I was seeing what it looked like working a lot of lines of stitching close together to cover the ground. I did one like this with running stitch (in an earlier post) and wanted to compare the effect. Some is a kind of semi-back stitch, taking the backwards stitch and then bringing the needle out at the end of the stitch instead of ahead of it. This has a slightly different look, kind of alternate bumpy and flat. (And saves thread of course. Back stitch does use a lot more thread than shows on the surface).
The second pic has a row of zigzags, still backstitches, but angled. I could pursue this to see how it covers an area.
I also decided to do these samples in postcard format. That gives the option of perhaps making them into some kind of book, or stringing them together in some way.

2 comments:

Gina E. said...

I saw your post on the Fabric postcards forum and was interested to see what you are doing with the postcards. I love the idea of doing the stitchalong projects in the postcard format - great way to 'file' stitch examples for future reference.
I'm not very creative, so I tend to follow what other people have started, therefore I can't think of anything other than buttonhole stitch to use for postcard edges!

Stitchety Grub said...

Well done ... love your stitchery I will be back regularly to see what yo uare up to...
Britt West Aus