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Mary Corbet

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I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more

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TAST Embroidery Stitch Challenge – Chevron Stitch

 

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Chevron Stitch is used in hand embroidery in a variety of ways, especially as a seam treatment in crazy quilting or as a decorative stitch in smocking. Chevron Stitch is similar in a lot of ways to Herringbone Stitch, and just as easy to work. Here are some photos of a “mini sampler” worked in Chevron Stitch for the TAST Challenge.

If you are unfamiliar with the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge, you will find it explained on Sharon’s Inaminuteago Blog. The whole idea of the challenge is to explore different embroidery stitches. Sharon posts each week’s stitch on her blog on Tuesday (Monday evening in the States), and those who are interested “stitch along” with the other participants, exploring a variety of hand embroidery stitches. It’s a great way for the beginner to become familiar with a variety of stitches. Each week, Sharon posts a “round up” of sites with photos of the stitch – a great source of inspiration for anyone interested in hand embroidery!

Last Tuesday, Sharon proposed Chevron Stitch. For the first time in many weeks, I’ve been able to do some casual night stitching, and produced this little sampler, which is about 3 x 4 inches. My own personal rules for participating in the challenge are to use what I have (no buying new materials right now!), to stitch only within a 6-inch hoop (makes it easy for hand-holding), and to post on the weekends during the weeks I have time to keep up with the challenge. These rules help keep me in line and help regulate my time between what I call “casual” embroidery and “work” embroidery. The “work” embroidery has set deadlines, so it has to be a priority!

On to it, then – here’s my mini sampler:

I worked it on linen – sold as a “counted” linen, but it’s not an even weave, as the warp and waft threads are not even remotely similar! I used a variety of stranded embroidery cotton – DMC, Weeks Dye Works, some hand-dyed stuff, etc. The ribbon is a scrap of YLI silk I had on hand. I don’t do a lot of work on “counted” material, so this was fun. I liked the symmetry for a change.

Some close-ups:

This is Chevron Stitch worked in a square of sorts – but, considering that the stitch is isolated and doesn’t really move from stitch to stitch, I wonder if it can legitimately be called “Chevron Stitch.” Whatever the case, it looks more or less the same.

These are a few stacked little Chevrons.

And a few woven in different sizes along the same line…

A few more stacked and staggered a little differently…

These are literally stacked, one on top of the other. Just playing a bit with the color scheme – I think stacked like this, they’d look great in smocking, to fill in a larger band area.

Couching a ribbon…

And staggering and stacking again.

So there it is!

I’ve only worked one other week so far in this challenge – but as the year progresses and these little samples build up, I think they would make great additions for a “stitch book” to display different basic embroidery stitches. So that’s my plan…

Check out the challenge if you have a chance and are interested! It’s fun!

 
 

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