playing with feather stitch

I was working on my exhibition embroidery recently and decided to test something that I had been wondering about. I had been pondering what would happen if you worked a feather stitch, stab-wise (ie, not scooping), but instead of just bringing the needle up inside the curve of working thread, you wrapped the thread round the needle once and then pulled it through.

I figured that you might get a feather stitch with a twist. Imagine my surprise when it came up looking like alternating twisted chain stitch (page 44 of both my stitch dictionaries)! But, thinking about it, they are extremely similar, just the feather stitch version is a little wider, and more stepped-from-side-to-side-looking.

My next wonder is what would happen if you wrapped it more than once… Hmmm… that’s definitely worth a try. Might start getting into Mountmellick thorn stitch territory… (page 113 of the stitch dictionaries)

Oh, I love playing with stitches!