Especially awesome stitches: Nat's Wonky Cross Stitch

I was rather intrigued with this particular bit of embroidery by Nat (Smallest Forest on Flickr) when I spotted it in the Flick Embroidery Group. It looked to me somewhat like a Jacobean Couching Stitch, somewhat like a bunch of stacked cross stitches and somewhat like the fabric of a coat I used to have. But not exactly like anything I had seen before! Anyway, Nat was kind of enough to share her technique with us of what she calls  a  Wonky Cross Stitch.

Nat:"I drew a grid (freehand) with an erasable pen, and then worked a cross stitch into the grid with 3 strands, in a middle blue colour. I thought the first layer looked a bit 'thin', so then I worked a second layer of cross stitches, at 45 degrees to the first, in 2 strands of very pale shade of  ice blue. Coverage was good by this point, but the colors were washed out, and as this is meant to be a rich blue piece, I used a single strand of dark blue thread to work a grid (using back stitches) over everything. I just looked for a naturally occurring grid in the cross stitches, and picked that out with the final thread."




Can't wait to see this piece finished. Inspiring stuff, thank you Nat!