TAST 2007 - herringbone stitch

Here's my first effort for TAST. The background fabric is left over from making a fibre postcard. It is black synthetic felt, scraps of brightly coloured organza and silk overlaid with animal print chiffon, held together with a machine stitched grid and then cut back in places with a soldering iron. The final insult was me trying out my new eyelet tool. I thought I would try over stitching with herringbone.


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The herringbone is worked in variegated stranded cotton and metallic thread.

This sample shows some variations you can make with herringbone stitch, by changing the width or scale, by lacing and by layering.


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This was worked on evenweave linen with a variety of threads.

The third row is a herringbone variation, but I got so carried away with the embellishment that the herringbone stitches are difficult to pick out. It is two lines of herringbone in tapestry wool, then two smaller lines worked across in perle cotton. I tied the stitches of the top line with a contrasting colour to see the effect. Then I got excited and filled in all the gaps with beads, bullions and French knots.

The fourth row is a line of laced double herringbone. The first line was worked in perle cotton and laced in fancy yarn. Then the second line was worked on top and laced, all in perle cotton. Then, inevitably, I added some beads.

The fifth row is a line of herringbone worked through a line of evenly spaced vertical straight stitches. I thought it looked a bit plain so I added some french knots. The straight stitch foundation is in soft cotton, the herringbone lacing and the knots are tapestry wool.

What is TAST? Take a Stitch Tuesday, see here for the flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/56846286@N00/

and here for information about the 2007 challenge