Stitch Sunday 11 – Roman Stitch (or just Stacked Fly Stitch)

Jet another Sunday. I know I have been lazy about posting these days, I have a helluva time at work, everyone except me seems to be on vacation, and there is a big construction site on the railway I have to take to work, causing a lot of annoyances. Also, I am in the process of switching to a new laptop.

So today’s stitch is usually called roman stitch, it is used both in conventional surface embroidery and in needlepoint on canvas. However, it is really just stacked fly stitches. it is usually worked by doing the loop first and then tacking it down, because the tacking stitch needs to be as small as possible. Some books classify roman stitch as a kind of couching, but I think it is so done like fly stitch, and true couching should require more than one tacking stitch in most places to hold down one thread. However, this stitch is a good example for how there is a limited number of ways to construct stitches, but endless possibilities for variation and specialized usage.

Here I show how to use this stitch to do a conventional leaf.  It is supposed to be a rose leaf, and those are serrated. So I make stitches of differing length to hint at this. For non-serrated leaves, you can stitch a back stitch outline first to make sure you get it right.

First, do a very close fly stitch at the top of the leaf, almost a detatched chain stitch.

Do the next fly stitch putting the loop next to the loop part of the first, come up for the tacking stitch where the last tacking stitch ended. Make the new tacking stitch straight and small. Remember the tacking stitches will form the midline of the leaf.

Add more fly stitches in the same way.

Continue until the leaf (or part of a leaf) is finished. Sometimes you will need to add a few straight stitches at the bottom to get the right shape.

Stitch Sunday Inspiration: Whipped Connected Fly Stitch

Earlier this week, I introduced spaced connected fly stitches used to depict plants. Like I wrote before, the mid line of such a plant sprig can be whipped to make it more pronounced.

First, do a prig of connected fly stitches. If you want to depict a plant, pay attention to start it neatly and give it an organic form. Avoid making it too regular.

Next, whip the mid line like you would a row of back stitches. Always run the needle under the stitches from the same side so the thread goes over the midline stitches.

Behold the finished twig.

Stitch Sunday 9 – Connected Fly Stitches

Last stitch sunday, we have seen fly stitch with beads. Fly stitch is fun with or without beads, but the question about stitches is, what to do with them? Fly stitches can be worked one below the other to form a plant like structure. i actually prefer this kind of thing over fern stitch for most applications, because the fly stitches look somewhat more organic.

As an additional tip, to give a more pronounced look to the twig, you can whip or lace the middle line made by the fly stitch tack down stitches like you would do with back stitches. I have no pictures for that right now, sorry.

TAST 1 2015

Sharon Bogon has started her take a stitch tuesday challenge at stitch one again. I don’t think I will take part regularly, with my own challenge on the go ans such, but I have to celebrate this so I post a fly stitch piece I did some time again when I considered re-doing TAST on my own. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody else’s Work.

To see all the older fly stitch postings, click here: fly stitch postings.

Fly Stitch 2 – TAST 1

So this is the second posting for Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge Information page– It is still about fly stitch.

I called in sick because of the tummy bug, so lots of stitching time. I continued with my sampler and the fly stitches.

The little bell in tis section was attached to some sweets I got from a patient at the hospital where I work. I added it to comemmorate the festive seasons and all the niceties from random people I recieved. The band was couched down using fly stitches, of course. The section also shows stray little fly stitches used as filling, on one side regular, on one side random. There are few things you can’t do with fly stitch.

This section shows fly stitch threaded with another thread and fly stitch used to couch down thick wool to fill a larger area. Both variants are from Jaqueline Enthoven’s book. The last row are big herringbone stitches tied down with fly stitches. That one is from Sharon Bs original posting.

The first part of this section shows freeform leaves and ferns. Some of them have wipped stems. You just do fly stitches with legs next to each other and then wip or lace the stitches like you would with back stitches.
The next two rows are combunations of fly stitches and cross stitches/ straight stitches (the latter ones in violet in each row)
The next row is fly and two ties stitch from Jaqueline Enthoven, together with little cross stitches. The last row is twisted fly and two ties, again from Enthoven’s book. Both are nice stitches I will want to explore further one day.

For those who didn’t read it: before i knew that TAST will run again I set myself two challenges:
a) work a sampler or two in order to learn all the stitches in Jaqueline Enthoven’s ” The Stitches of Creative Embroidery”
b) make a dent in my UFO pile
I try to combine those with TAST

This section shows some patterns done from fly stitches. It taught me that such patterns should be planned on paper and be done on easiely countable evenweave to be effective.
The last rows show zig zag fly stitch from Enthoven’s book. I did not really like this one because it pulls out of shape easiely. In the last row, I tied down the loops with little straight stitches, this version might have potential as a decorative border stitch.

The last row is the first row of buttonhole stitch. just couldn’t resist last night.

Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge 1 – Fly Stitch

So it’s this time of the year again – new beginnings, good intentions, new challenges starting…. I didn’t do any great posting on this because I was first busy celebrating christmass with family drama and the new year with lots of booze and then I was down with a tummy bug big time. Well, I still am, but the show must go on.

So, happy, healthy new year to you all.

And yes, there’s an exciting new challenge on Sharon B’s blog. She’s running Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge again, see Take a Stitch Tuesday 2012 Challenge Information page. Which means, she’ll propose a stitch every tuesday and participants try them out. I answered to the original posting that I’m looking forward to seeing participants work, but won’t take part due to my notorious inabillity to follow up with challenges as required. Obviously, she did not really read those gazillions of replies and added me to the particpants list. So I’ll take this as a good omen and take part. I do love challenges.

So, Take a Stitch Tuesday Week 1 is fly stitch, one of those stitches you cannot really do justice in one week imho. Anyway, I added it to my current sampler, drawing inspirations from the appropriate chapter of Eindhoven’s book. I’ll probably try to do more later this weekend.

The two leaves in this section were knitted for a holiday knit along on ravelry. Beside them, there’s some free form fly stitch.

The next row shows a few ways to combine fly stitches to patterns. The possibilities there are truly endless. The last two variants are from the book, the green ones are tied down with detached chain stitches, this is also called tete de boef stitch, or when connected “pulled-through cable stitch. I’m showing this one here. I did some more with tete de boef stitch on that other sampler, but I just realized I haven’t really photographed that. Maybe I should. the lilac stitches are tied down with bullion stitches.