Right off the bat, I'll admit I've never been a major fan of gingham except on baby goods and picnic tables, but I was chatting with a lady the other day about embroidery, and she started talking about "chicken scratch" embroidery. Our conversation prompted me to look at this embroidery technique worked on gingham in a new light...

"Chicken scratch" embroidery is a lacy-like embroidery technique worked on gingham. It's called a number of other things besides "chicken scratch" - depression embroidery (as in "Depression era"), tenneriffe lace, snowflake embroidery or lace, gingham lace, or Amish embroidery.

It involves only about three or four types of stitches - the running stitch, the cross stitch, the double cross stitch, and (if you want to consider it a separate stitch), the threaded running stitch.

I found a couple websites that have quite a bit of information on it and instructions as well. The clearest set of instructions for chicken scratch embroidery that I found were hosted at University of Kentucky. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to download them.

You can find free chickent scratch embroidery patterns around the web, too, if you're interested in trying the technique. Here's a chicken scratch embroidered heart, and here's a chicken scratch "angel" (I think?).

The nicest samples of chicken scratch I saw were on a blog called "feeling stitchy" (hilarious name!), where some photos of aprons worked in chicken scratch embroidery are displayed. What I like in the sample close-up is the "stepped" edge of the apron and the use of rick rack. The site refers viewers to a flickr site where you can see a magnificent photo of the whole chicken scratch apron - it's quite nice!

I also found an illustration of the stitches used in chicken scratch embroidery online at Future Christian Homemakers.

It was actually this idea of cloth napkins and tablecloths worked in chicken scratch embroidery that prompted me to write about this technique. I thought, with summer here, what a great and quick gift this would make - or what a cool way to dress up a table for Fourth of July.... just a thought!

I was thinking that this technique of embroidery would be an excellent way to get kids "into" needlework. The grid in gingham makes spacing simple - and spacing is often the hardest thing for kids to get the hang of.

Another thing to add to the "idea list" for future kids' embroidery classes. Now I'm off to prepare for another class!

Labels: beginner embroidery, embroidery for children, free embroidery patterns, gift ideas