Learn the Crown Stitch

Hard to believe it's already July! The summer is one of my favorite times of year. Everything slows down and with the longer days I seem to have all this extra energy to throw into my friends and family. And my stitching of course!

But seeing as how it's the Fourth of July, I'm guessing a lot of our readers have barbecues and fireworks to attend to when they're done here, so let's jump right in.

A bit of irony for your independence day: we're going to learn the crown stitch! As we've mostly been trying our hand at band and border stitches, this should be a nice change. The crown stitch is a isolated stitch that can also be used as a fill stitch when done together. It's pretty and as a bonus, super easy!

You can work this on plain or even weave fabric. It looks really lovely on linen with thin, delicate threads, but for today's lesson we'll stick with my standard cotton/stranded floss combo.

The base of the crown stitch is made up of three straight stitches. Start by making your first straight stitch in the middle of where you want your crown. Then, make one more stitch on each side at an angle, using the same hole as the top of your first stitch. Make your side stitches just a little shorter than the middle.

    

Then, pick a point above your left stitch and come up through the back of your fabric with your needle and thread. Thread your needle under the top point of all three stitches, and pull the thread through. Find a point above the right straight stitch to end your stitch.

         

 

And there you have it, a pretty little simple stitch! I must admit though, that to me this stitch also looks a good bit like a little dragonfly or butterfly! 

Above is one way you can use this stitch to fill in a shape, but you could also connect some of the stitches if you wanted your fill to be really tight. I didn't worry too much about that here in an effort to keep things simple, but couldn't resist adding some texture and extra color by scattering crown stitches throughout his wings.

I hope you enjoyed learning the crown stitch! How would you use this stitch in an embroidery project? Be sure to share some examples in the Feeling Stitchy Flickr pool, and enjoy your holiday!