Chicken Scratch

Years ago I encountered this stitch -- and gingham-printed embroidery fabric for it -- in a stitchery shop somewhere. The fabric -- navy-and-white, red-and-white, and green-and-white check, has been sitting in my embroidery supply stash ever since...until now.

Wouldn't you know it? This is the exact stitch that Sharon B has chosen to begin Stitch Explorer 2009.

I dug out my supplies and began, her instructions printed and faithfully sitting at my elbow. I'll admit, it was more difficult than I thought -- particularly as I was working on gingham-printed fabric rather than on plain. I thought the colour would guide my counting so that the cross-stitches would come out evenly, but in reality, I found that the colour distracted me from my count. In addition, I discovered that I had trouble translating the running stitch to the fabric. I kept wanting to do it one stitch at a time, in between crossed-stitches -- and ended up with verticals where I should have had horizontals. So much for what I thought was a short-cut!

Here are a couple of photos:



I like the work I did with the white floss, but when I tried to play with the stitch, using navy and then white (bottom row, right-hand photo)...well, let's just say that if it weren't a sample to be kept for the record, I'd have picked out those stitches by now!

If I find time, I'll try the stitch again on plain fabric and see if I like it any better.