TAST Week 4 – Cretan Stitch

I wasn’t terribly inspired by this stitch and have been a little unimaginative in my samples. The beauty of the TAST challenge though is in encouraging creativity with unfamiliar stitches that opens your eyes to their potential. There are a lot more permutations to be explored but for now this is what I produced.

1. I have used straightforward cretan stitch; closed cretan stitch; a curved line of closed stitches and a leaf shape.
2. I turned the stitches to produce a tree shape by gradually increasing the stitch width; I widened the central crossed area to couch down a piece of ribbon and overlapped rows of stitches.
3. The square on the right contains layers of cretan stitch worked completely randomly in a variety of threads, the uppermost layer of stitches are worked into the other stitches without going through the ground fabric at all, these stitches are pulled slightly tighter than normal almost like a lacing. I like this layering of a single stitch, it creates a lot of depth and interest.

Inspired by ‘Zentangle’ 

I’ve begun adding stitching to my ‘Zentangle’ inspired canvas:

I started with the challenge stitches but couldn’t resist adding some extra stitching –

• Left – Feather Stitch
• Center (top to bottom) – Cretan, Buttonhole & Fly Stitch
• Right – Back Stitch in purple woven with yellow alternated with lines of Cable Chain Stitch

I’m really enjoying the TAST challenge; it’s nice to focus on hand stitching for a while and the range of samples produced every week are inspiring.