Scotch Stew

August 28, 2017, 12:11 am
Filed under: ANG Seminar 2017, Melita's Designs, Scotch Stew

This is another “challenge” piece intended to explore a single stitch. I selected the Scotch Stitch. And, I’m happy to say that it received a third place ribbon in origin design, non-professional category! My artist’s statement follows:

In researching Scotch Stitches, I learned that Box Stitches are described as a “series of diagonal stitches that form squares or boxes” from Jo Ippolito Christensen in The Needlepoint Book. The Mosaic Stitch is the smallest of the Box Stitches, Cashmere is a rectangular Mosaic Stitch, and Scotch Stitch is an expanded Mosaic Stitch. I found Scotch Stitch variations in The Needlepoint Book, Amy Bunger’s Keeping Me In Stitches, and SuZy’s Portable Stitches app. However, I found the Scotch Stitch variations in Scotch Stitch by Stitch by Kathleen Rake the most inspirational and educational by learning how to vary stitches with size, direction, color, and threads to create endless variations.

After having just stitched Designing with Stitches by Julie Goetsch (http://needlepoint.org/Archives/00-01/Design.php – originally published in NeedlePointers, Volume X, Number 1, Spring 1982) with my ANG chapter, I stitched the frame using the Cashmere and Mosaic Stitches instead of the Oblong Cross Stitches as Julie had done. The frame is comprised of numerous 4 by 2 units and 4 corners that are 2 by 2. This created the appropriate negative spaces: 25 areas that are 8 by 8 and 16 areas that are 4 by 4.

There are 10 variations of the Scotch Stitch in the 25 larger negative spaces (8 by 8 areas; A-G), 3 variations in the smaller negative spaces (4 by 4 areas; a-c), and 6 variations (6 by 6 areas) repeating to form the outermost border. There’s lots more variations that could be cooked up using more Scotch variations, more threads, or both!