More Wallpaper

Three more rows of stitches: the first is Vandsyke stitch, a new stitch for me that I found in Mary Thomas's Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches. I purchased this book, second hand, from a book sale at my local branch of the Embroiderer's Guild. Four of the following stitches were taken from this book.


I worked the stitch in the lovely fine wool from Gumnut Yarns (light fawn) that I picked up at Alli Palli. I found the stitch easy enough to work, although it was a little difficult to keep the central chain straight. At one point, I tried to shape the stitch around a circular cut out, that proved more difficult and I am not entirely happy with the result.

To the right of the Vandyke stitch is a row of reverse chain in Rachelette (silver Taupe) from the Caron Collection and the right of that is Basket Stitch worked in DMC cotton. Again the stitch was fairly simple to work.

The design has three small circles set into the striped back ground. The first (on the far right) I filled with velvet stitch.


This is an other stitch that I have not tried before. I found the stitch fairly easy to follow but on this scale (28 count linen) extremely fiddly. However, the stitches were tightly packed in and felt secure so that when I trimmed them the result was a nice thick velvety pile.

For the circle on the left I used Turkey Stitch (another new one). On paper, this stitched looked more straight forward than velvet stitch but I found it difficult to translate into practice. I think I got it eventually, but am still not certain that I was working it correctly. It was less fiddly than Velvet Stitch but is less dense and never felt as secure. Although Velvet Stitch was more difficult to work, I think the resulting texture makes it more worthwhile that Turkey Stitch.


The third (central) circle I filled with padded Satin Stitch outlined with stem stitch.


Particularly unimpressive. I could say that the linen frayed and came loose from the calico border, so the linen was not taught in the frame. I could tell you that I worked it late at night and was tired. Poor excusses really, I should be able to work a better satin stitch than this by now.

All three of these circles are worked in Flat silk. Allthough much of the sheen is lost in the Velvet and Turkey stitches, I think that the lushious pile of the Velvet Stitch is largely due to the silk. I will try this stitch again in another thread to compare the results.


Happy Stitching