Leaves and Embroidery Stitches

[Jo in NZ]

Theresa, I thought I would post this here for you. Some how the message was sent to everyones private emails. You will get many more responses here :)
Jo in NZ

A message from Theresa to all members of Hand Embroidery on stitchin fingers!

I am fairly new at embroidery. I teach myself through books and online resources. I work full time and I still have a child at home, so my craft time is limited. I have a couple of large projects that I rotate through but I am also creating a stitch sampler modeled on the samplers discussed in this group. I put my starting date on it as 07/04/08 so I am coming up on my first aniversary of the project. I will update my blog and post a link when I have done so. It is a lot of fun to share the projects and I get alot of inspiration from the online communities.

I made a list of stitches to explore and I have made it to the fishbone stitch? What's up with this stitch? Most resources do not list it although I have found it in a few places. I was trying the fishbone stitch on my sampler and I got the idea to rough in a simple leaf shape and use different stitches to fill it in. I wanted to make a comparison. So far I have found reference to these stitches as they pertain to leaves:

Open Fishbone
Raised Fishbone
Buttonhole
Cretan
Closed Herringbone
flat
Leaf
Roumanian
Long and Short
Satin
Padded Satin
Van Dyke

Does anyone use these various stitches on leaves? Are there others? What is your preferred stitch?

[Lorelei Terry Halley]

Jo in NZ
For fishbone, raised fishbone and open fishbone, see Jacqueline Enthoven STITCHES OF CREATIVE EMBROIDERY, 1964 pages 70-73. Also Donna Kooler ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEEDLEWORK 2000 page 120. I have used it for leaves on a sampler, but didn't like it too much. I'm not at all sure that the stitch was at fault, I think it was my sloppy workmanship that was the problem. I seem to get better results from working fly stitches in a vertical stack very close together. The tie down stitch works as the leaf vein, and it is very easy to change the leaf --widening and narrowing--by just changing the arm length.

[TheeCoyote]

Here's a video showing how to do it.
http://www.needlenthread.com/2006/11/fishbone-stitch-video-tutorial...

[Romilly]

I've used most of these on leaves at different times, and stem stitch used as a filler.

In my experience, some of them work better with different threads and different scales than others. For example: satin works best on a small scale, where you don't have to worry about really really long stitches. If you've got a bigger leaf, long and short or encroaching satin stitch will fill it better without having to worry about it. (By the way, you can also pad long and short stitch... as well as satin). Padding a stitch will make it stand up from the fabric more.

I've found that I prefer Roumanian with crewel wools to working it with embroidery floss (although I do have a piece in progress that uses it with floss in smaller areas).

Closed herringbone is beautiful worked from the back for shadow embroidery. I've never been able to make fishbone look the way I want it to, although I've seen it done by other people and it's absolutely gorgeous! I prefer Van Dyke or closed fly if I'm working smallish leaves.

Buttonhole, chain, and stem stitch are often used in crewel work on large scale leaves to outline and highlight.

Best thing you can do is experiment to see what works for you and what YOU like. Not just with the obvious stitches -- try some that wouldn't seem obvious. Try filling a leaf with rows of palestrina knots for example, either following the vein lines or the curve of the leaf for an interesting texture.

Historically, Chinese embroidery filled leaves and flowers and all sorts of other forms with the Peking knot, which is basically a French knot that only wraps the needle once. They often used one strand of silk to do it with, too... making for very very fine embroideries with lots of detail. Kind of like pointillism in painting. There's a reason the alternate name for the stitch used that way is the blind knot, though... you can go blind trying to put in that kind of detail with such a small stitch!

Hope this helps!

[Carol-Anne]

The Japanese also fill shapes with round knots, which are more like colonial knots than French, or with long-legged knots, which are like pistel stitch.

In Japanese embroidery it is quiet common to fill larger leaves with a form of satin stitch and to add viens on top to hold the long stitches. This is done either by couching a thread over the satin stitch or stitching them with a stitch like stem stitch.

Bayeux stitch is another that can be used for filling an area such as a leaf and also detached buttonhole and all it's variations.

[Liz in Kansas]

Thanks for that link, Carol-Anne. It is a stitch I have not tried before, but happen to have a need for a filler stitch. Serendipity!

[Joy]

Hi Teresa,
There is Fern Leaf stitch for an open look. I quite like using Fly stitch. I also use stem stitch in any thread it has a nice effect and covers like long and short stitch but is much easier.
Good luck with experimenting.