stitch illustration

Sorry Take a stitch Tuesday is going up on Wednesday. We had a public holiday on Monday and I forgot what day it was! I must not be quite back to my normal self. I feel a twit but here it is a day late…

I often get asked what do I do with lumpy or highly textured and thick yarns. My answer is always couch them on.

This week the challenge stitch is couching. So this week you get to play with all those lumpy hairy threads. I think people will enjoy it. It is simple to work and adds texture to any piece.

As you can see in the sample above you can easily work threads in a spiral.

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Many people do not realise that you can use other embroidery stitches to hold down the thread. In this case I used a twisted chain.

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This is ribbon which is couched down with beads and embroidery

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This thread is held down by buttonhole

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Here the same thread held in place with barred chain.

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Here herringbone holds two stands of thicker thread down

The possibilities are endless so don’t feel you can’t use those thicker or lumpy threads! Click through to the directions on how to do couching in my stitch dictionary. When you have stitched a sample swing by and leave a comment so people can check out your site. Don’t forget to leave your URL. To avoid spam you must be registered to leave a comment and all comments are moderated. This means when I have read them I approve them and they are published.

Don’t forget that Debra Spincic generously runs a web ring for the TAST challenge which is found here and for those who have a Flickr account there is the Take a stitch Tuesday flickr group

That’s the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge stitch this week … Enjoy!