Stella’s Birds – Doing the Leaves..

I started with a bit of a blind alley…

My natural tendency is to barrel in with glee and use a different stitch for every element, but I am learning (somewhat belatedly, it must be admitted!) that moderation is a virtue in design as in life.

So after a couple of blind alleys – wheatear stitch doesn’t sit happily with the crinkles of the vine leaf! – I have actually been quite temperate. There are three leaves in the design, and after some thought and experimentation I’ve settled on the same stitch combination for all three of them.

I’m using some of that gorgeous Studio Flax linen thread, which has really rewarding stitch definition, so it seemed as though more knotted and twisted stitches were in order.

I chose to use Palestrina Knot Stitch (entered in the RSN stitch bank as Double Knot Stitch) for the outlines of all three leaves. It’s strongly textured, so it should stand up to that Portuguese Knotted Stem Stitch, and it’s flexible enough to follow all the crinkles of the vine leaves.

For the veins, I chose to use ordinary Twisted Chain Stitch, working it carefully to keep each chain stitch looking separate. Twisted Chain Stitch can be worked drifting towards Rope Stitch (this is discussed on the RSN Stitch Bank page) and indeed, in other parts of this panel I expect to use that variation.

Stella’s Birds isn’t going to be a sampler in any formal sense. But as I push/pull between throwing every stitch in my shelf full of stitch dictionaries at it, and restricting my stitch choice in the interests of providing a bit of calm at various points in the piece, I may find myself demonstrating some of the breadth of execution available in all of them.

In all cases, however, Harry The Hound Of The Doleful Countenance has been overseeing operations!