Take a Stitch Tuesday - Herringbone Stitch

Sharon from InAMinuteAgo has today started Take A Stitch Tuesday, where she introduces and plays with a new stitch each week and encourages the rest of us to do the same. I've joined and I'm scared cos I'm a beginner when it comes to embroidery. But it seems like a good way to 'ave a go', so I shall!

I've decided to do two things, I'm going to journal thoughts, ideas and a sample of each stitch, and I'm also going to embroider with each of the stitches on a leaf fabric I printed a few months ago.


This is my first effort, the journal page and sample of herringbone stitch. It is VERY basic as that is my ability at present. I found I needed to really concentrate just to do the simple stitch, so magnificent experiments with a stitch will have to come (much) later. :-)

I quite like fairly plain herringbone stitch I think, stretched out with a small cross-over. And I also like the look of a small straight stitch over the top of the cross-over, in a contrasting colour.


By the way, this fabulous journal was made by Meshell and given to me for Christmas. And she made me TWO! I'm so lucky. She tea dyed the pages knowing that I love the "dug up out of the ground" ancient look. Apparently she had major stress doing it too. I was at work and she had garbage bags lying all over the house covered in damp tea dyed pages, and she was running around with a hair dryer like a mad woman, trying to get them dry before I got home.

This is the leaf printed fabric that I'm going to gradually embroider the year.

The colour of the photo is a bit weird, the fabric itself is a lovely aged looking tea dyed homespun, and the leaf print is a sort of brown/grey/hint of khaki. I printed it with the intent of having a piece of fabric I really really like available at all times to play embroidery with. It will be interesting to see how it develops. I'm thinking of doing a column of herringbone stitch top to bottom on each side, to join up the corner leaves and create a border of sorts.