Take a Stitch Tuesday - Fly Stitch

This week on TAST (well, last week actually) it's Fly Stitch. I'm continuing on with my embroidery piece to front the napkin box, actually I think I'll call it a serviette holder, sounds much posher eh. :-)

I was mucking around with the stitches in my journal, and I noticed that long skinny fly stitches alongside each other looked a bit like a picket fence. Then I looked at some photos of wood grain and thought maybe artistic licence was the go, and fly stitch butting together could just about pass for the rings on wood. First step was to fuse a piece of light brown fabric with the picket points cut out.


Then I fly stitched on the brown fabric to hopefully make it look like a little fence! I then did a whole heap of fly stitch fronds alongside the fence to hide the edge. You can see it near the edge of hoop next to the larger feather stitch shrubs.


While I am pretty pleased with how the fence has turned out, I feel that the shrubby part just looks like a hodge podge mess. I think I've stacked too many fronds over the top of themselves with hindsight, but I think it has achieved its aim, that of making the fence look continuous.


Then I added a line of small grassy looking fly stitches along the bottom of the fence line, to soften the line and also to help stabilise the long stitch tails from the picket fence stitches. A few tiny french knots finishes it off.


This photo shows the shape that the piece will be when it's attached to the serviette holder - the triangular gap is where you reach through for a serviette. That gap was where my embroidery idea first started.... it seemed a nice place to have flowers cascading over the edge. And it's grown from there.


I'm thinking of mirroring the basic layout on the right hand side but using the different stitches that TAST brings, but today I've been looking at it wondering what the edge of a cottage might look like there instead. AND..... if I did that, I could continue another wall of the house around the side of the box. I'm not sure which way I'll go, the house idea could be interesting moving on from stitching plants to stitching bricks and windows. It will have to remain thoughts for a while though as I'm off on holiday on Saturday, and I'm not taking any sewing with me. I should take my journal, yes, I will.