Take a Stitch Tuesday - Chevron Stitch

This week's TAST stitch is Chevron Stitch. I've seen this stitch before and quite like it. Off to the journal for a bit of a think and a play....

The effect of the curved line appealed to me, as did adjoined multiple curved lines... thoughts of a rainbow of colours sprang to mind at first. I also liked the idea of stacking the stitches. Then it was off to play with some rainbow variegated thread to do some experimenting. It's interesting how very formal and neat this stitch looks when done straight, and yet when you start to play with it, with varying heights and with curves, how it becomes more whimsical. I think this stitch always maintains some dignity though, because of the horizontal bars perhaps.


Doodling with curves brought about a basic spiral shape which I drew onto a piece of fabric with pencil. Then I went to town with all the new variegated threads I bought in a sale recently! All the spirals are simply chevron stitch in a line with the exception of the darker blue area, which is chevron stitch stacked upon itself. At this point I started seeing a sort of tree shape in all the spirals, with the dark blue being the trunk, and so I added a line of backstitch on the inner curve to give it more of a defined shape.


I decided that the curves looked a bit too open, so out came the beads! I sewed a bead in between each horizontal bar on the upper curve of each spiral, then added a larger bead in the centres. Looking at it I think I went a bit overboard with all the colours - looks bit riotous. Riotous but funky. :-)


Because I thought of the spiral shape as a tree, I thought I'd add a section along the bottom to represent grasses and some flowers. This section was challenging. I MADE myself do stitches up and down and all over the place, and then stitch on top of other stitches. My brain keeps telling me "this is not how we do things - it needs to be neat neat neat!" Hey, I like how it looks! I have so much admiration for people who can just fill in spaces haphazardly with stitches so I was pleased with my efforts. I thought the buttons made cute flowers, they are poppies I've decided. :-)